


If all you have is a hammer (everything looks like a nail)

by Iben



Series: If all you have is a hammer [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dystopia, F/M, Female John Blake, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-12-07
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:40:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 52,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5313389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iben/pseuds/Iben
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As she peeks around the door, she realizes that the room should have been darker. The faint light falling in from the stairwell would only have reached a small part of it. The light is on in the bathroom and there is a gun pointed at her.</p><p>She holds up her hands, instinctively.</p><p>“Close the door.” </p><p>It's a man holding the gun and his voice sounds strained. Robin does as she is told. He's sitting on the bathroom floor, shirtless and bloody.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was somewhat inspired by Child 44 when I wrote this. Obviously my story is not of the same caliber as that book, so read it if you haven't, it's really good! 
> 
> This story is the first part in a series.

Robin quickens her steps because it's past curfew. The rain-soaked street, littered with cigarette butts, empty beer cans and torn up newspapers, gleams in the pale light from the streetlamps. Only a few of them are working, but enough to make her clearly visible should a patrol car pass by. She's the only person on the sidewalk. 

A glass bottle rests on its side by a staircase that leads up to the front door of the building to her left and for a moment she considers taking it, throwing it and breaking at least one more streetlight. Do the city a favor, cloak it in more shadows for people to move through. She has good aim. But she walks on, the fear of getting caught getting the better of her. 

Should she be caught outdoors after curfew she has a chance of talking her way out of it, say she's on her way home from work, her train was canceled. That's a fairly common occurrence, they might listen to that. As a woman she might have another way as well to conciliate the authorities, she's heard stories like that, but she chooses not to dwell on it, hoping she will never find herself in that position. Should she get caught vandalizing city property however, she'd be declared an enemy of the state faster than she can say Ra's al-Ghul.

She turns onto a smaller street, barely more than a back alley. Almost home. It's darker here, no streetlamps to vandalize to begin with. The apartment she's been allotted is in an old, worn, three-story building. The stairwell smells of grease, courtesy of the unpleasant lady on the first floor who seems to be frying things twenty-four seven, and of dampness. The river is just a stone's throw away and Robin has a theory about how this whole building will slide into the water one day when the foundation has completely rotted away, but so far it is standing. 

She walks up the stairs and fits her key into the lock of her door. It won't turn. She tries again, before she realizes that the door isn't locked. It's not a particularly sturdy door, nor would it be difficult to pick the lock. Of course, it should be obvious to anyone that the person living here doesn't have anything worth stealing. Perhaps she forgot to lock it this morning, but she knows she didn't.

Slowly she pushes the door open. She wishes she had her gun, or even a nightstick, but of course all weapons were confiscated when they took away her job, along with her right to bear arms. At first she sees nothing out of the ordinary, her living room looks exactly the same as she left it. Then, as she peeks around the door, she realizes that the room should have been darker. The faint light falling in from the stairwell would only reach a small part of it. The light is on in the bathroom and there is a gun pointed at her.

She holds up her hands, instinctively.

“Close the door.” 

It's a man holding the gun and his voice sounds strained. Robin does as she is told. He's sitting on the bathroom floor, shirtless and bloody. 

For a second nothing happens. She is standing there, hands up, and he is pointing the gun at her. There is not much space between them, her apartment is small. His hand is shaking. All that red, blooming out all over the floor, has leaked out of him. Then he drops the arm holding the gun.

Robin doesn't move for another second. Her heart is beating fast in her chest, the shock of being held at gunpoint and at finding an intruder in her apartment freezes her. Then she snaps out of it and walks over to the bathroom. The man is still holding the gun in one hand, but his arm is resting limply on his lap. He is propped up against the side of the bathtub. He is massive. And bleeding. There is blood everywhere. The smell of copper fills her nose, lands on her tongue.

“I think you need to go to the hospital,” she says, because it's the first thing that pops up in her head. 

“No.”

It's clear he did not come here to rob her. He's been shot. He's hiding. Shot by the police? Maybe he's a member of the resistance movement? 

He has raided her medicine cabinet and he has found her one bottle of vodka. He has dressed some of his wounds and he has drained her bottle of painkillers. A guy his size can probably take the dosage, but the question is how much effect they're having. She takes them for menstrual cramps and the occasional headache. 

He looks at her. A sheen of sweat covers his skin and he is pale. 

“I will not hurt you,” he says. “Can you stitch me up?”

She notices the thread and needle, hanging from a wound just above his hip. He's managed to make one stitch. His hands are covered in blood and judging from how he's having trouble focusing his gaze on her, he's minutes from passing out. 

She should call the authorities. He could be anyone. He is certainly trouble. But he said no to a hospital and even though she doesn't know the reason, she doesn't want to serve him up. 

“Yes,” she says. 

She picks up the vodka bottle and pours some over her hands. Crouching down next to him she touches his back, the skin is smooth. No exit wound.

“The bullet is still in there,” she says. “I have to get it out or it'll get infected.”

“I took it out.”

“What?”

She looks up, but he has passed out. Maybe that is just as well. She's never had a wound sutured without anesthetics, but she's guessing it's not very pleasant. Also, if he is unconscious she can work in peace, without worrying about being shot. 

She sutures the wound and cleans it as best she can. Her hands are bloody when she is done. Her clothes are bloody, because she has knelt in it. 

He is still out cold. He looks dead. Carefully she places two fingers on his neck. He's not dead, she can feel a faint pulse. His hair is sweat-soaked and his skin is eerily white, but he's still breathing. 

Now what? There is no way she can lift him. She thinks again about calling the police. That's what she should do. It is strange to think that she used to be one of them, but the police now is something else. No matter what this man has done, he almost certainly does not deserve what will happen to him if the authorities gets their hands on him. Even if he isn't a member of the resistance movement, even if he is nothing but a common criminal, there is no longer anything just about the justice system. 

He must have been shot close-by, then made his way here and broke into her apartment to hide and, literally, clean his wounds. His clothes are nondescript. The pants, which he are still wearing, are dark gray and his shoes are worn winter boots. He looks fit, his chest and arms and shoulders are muscular. He must have a modicum of medical knowledge, she thinks. Not to mention self-control, considering that he dug a bullet out of his own flesh, perhaps even more than one, and patched himself up, before succumbing to the blood loss. Ex-cop, like herself?

It doesn't seem right to leave him on the bathroom floor, but she doesn't know how to move him. Carefully, watching his face while doing so, she takes the gun from him. His hand is limp; he doesn't stir. Popping out the magazine she sees that it is empty, the chamber too. She glances at him again. Clever, threatening her with an empty gun. 

She gets to her feet and walks out to the kitchenette, partitioned off from the living room only by a bench and some cabinets. She cleans his blood off her hands and off the gun. She hides it in a drawer, under some oven gloves. It's far from ideal, should her apartment be raided it would be found in no time, but she will have to deal with that later. 

She walks back to the bathroom and the man still slumped on the floor in there. He can't stay there. The floor is too cold and he is in an awkward position. She crouches down in front of him again.

“Hey,” she says, touching his arm. She half expects it to feel cold, that is what he looks like, but it isn't, it's warm, just like his cheek when she touches that. A hint of stubble scrapes against her fingers. “Hey, wake up...”

His eyelids flutter, but he doesn't open his eyes. He has to stand up on his own two feet, or she will never manage to move him. 

“Wake up!” She doesn't shout, but she raises her voice and she pinches his cheek. 

He opens his eyes, but his gaze is unfocused. 

“You have to get up,” she says. “I'll help you.”

She isn't sure if he has heard her, or understands her, but she drapes his arm over her shoulders and when she pulls, he helps. Somehow she gets him to his feet. He leans heavily on her, but slowly they make it out of the bathroom and she steers them to the bedroom, straight to their right. If his legs give out, or if he looses his balance, she will drop him and he'll crash to the floor. She's sweating, but the distance to the bed is short and she manages to get him into it. 

His eyes are closed. Maybe he has passed out again, or simply fallen asleep. Feeling like the world's most unsuitable and reluctant nurse, she unlaces his boots and pulls them off. She thought the rest of him smelled bad, of sweat and blood, but his feet are even worse. It is strange that she reflects on that, considering the world of trouble she is in for even having him here. Sweaty feet are the least of her problems. 

She has to clean up here. Even if there is no way she can explain having this shot, possibly soon to be dead, man in her apartment, it somehow seems even worse if her bathroom is covered in blood. In her mind she is already coming up with excuses. He threatened me, he had a gun. She should take that out of the drawer and put it back with him. There are no bullets in it, so it is without risk. 

The clothes he had stripped out of when he got here are on the floor just outside the bathroom. A sweater and a shirt, both of them blood-soaked. A thick, wool jacket; her fingers find one of the bullet holes in the sleeve. She searches the pockets and comes up with a set of keys, and a wallet. Feeling partly like a crook, and partly like her old cop-self, she flips it open. There are a few hundred in it. The coat looks to be of good quality so perhaps that is not a surprise, but it sure isn't enough money to buy your way out of the country or anything like that. Is the gun his? Or taken from one of his attackers?

She takes out his ID card and is surprised to see that it is a military ID, but it is his, she recognizes him in the photograph, although he doesn't look at all as worse for wear in it. Antonio Dorrance. The name doesn't mean anything to her. 

A defector? Or is the ID card a fake? It looks real, as far as she can tell. The card states his height, tall, as she already knows, eye color: gray, hair color: brown. It takes her a moment before she realizes that his rank isn't printed on the card. It should be. Perhaps it is a fake, but that is a pretty big detail to leave out if you're trying to fool anyone. 

She stares at the photo. Something stirs in the back of her mind. His size, the eyes looking back at her from the small, rectangular picture, military but no rank. She feels her throat go dry when she realizes who it is that's sleeping in her bedroom. 

Bane. 

It doesn't make any sense. He's the most powerful man in the city, one of the most powerful people in the country, why would he be hiding in her apartment? It's ludicrous. But she knows it's him. She has seen him. Not this up close, and obviously never in this state, but she was in the front row when he made a speech outside town hall, not long after the League of Shadows' coup d'état. And she has seen his picture in the papers. Of course, she's never seen his face. He always keeps it covered, a scarf wrapped over his mouth, guerrilla-style. 

She's always despised him for it. He doesn't even have the guts, or the decency, to fully face the people he's oppressing. Of course, no one knows what Ra's al-Ghul, the leader of the League of Shadows and ruler of the country, looks like either. 

Antonio Dorrance. It's such an ordinary name. In the photo he looks like an ordinary man. He's handsome, regular features, a straight nose and full lips. It is hard to imagine that he has murdered thousands of people, that he commands the armed forces that keep this city in an iron fist. 

Robin can feel her own pulse in her ears, a rush of blood to her head. He's here, in her apartment, out cold. She has no idea why, but she figures no one knows where he is. She could kill him. She doesn't need a gun, he's sleeping, unable to put up a fight. She could take a knife from the kitchen, walk over to the bed and slit his throat, right now. Justice for everyone he's had exiled or killed. Payback for every humiliation, all the despair and fear and sorrow. He would never hurt anyone again.

Minutes tick away, she's not sure how many, but it doesn't matter. She knows she won't be able to do it. She can stand there and pretend she can, but cold blooded murder isn't in her. After a moment she gets a plastic bag from the kitchen and puts his clothes in it. She has to get rid of them, somehow. Or perhaps when he wakes up he can deal with it himself. 

If he wakes up. She realizes her situation is even worse than she thought. If he dies she has no way of getting rid of the body. Maybe, just maybe, she might have had a chance of getting someone to help her if he had been anybody else. She might even have been able to call the cops and pray to God that they would believe her if she said he broke into her home and she doesn't know him. But how can she possibly explain that Bane died in her apartment? She'll be executed. 

No, he has to live. Her life depends on it. 

She cleans the bathroom. He has bled everywhere, the floor, the sink and the bathtub, even the tiles on the walls are stained with red. She finds the bullets, two of them. Everything goes into plastic bags, including the rags she used to mop up, and finally her own clothes. She doesn't know what's going on, but she knows that the less evidence there is that anything ever happened here the better. She takes a shower, a real quick one, and puts on clean clothes. 

She stays up all night. It doesn't feel real. The darkness and the silence, the whole city is sleeping, except for her. She goes to the bedroom to check on him, make sure he's still breathing. She's afraid of finding him dead, afraid of finding him awake. But he's unconscious, unmoving, except for the slow rise and fall of his chest with each breath.

It's one of the longest nights she's ever experienced, and she's been through some long ones. Maybe she should have called the cops, but it's too late now. Having him here for hours, in such a critical condition, risking his life, she'd get arrested for sure. He said no hospital, and that's all she has to go on, although she thought he might be in the resistance at the time. As it turns out he's quite the opposite, and even though she can't figure them out, he must have his reasons. 

She goes into the bedroom again. She stares at him. He's a mess. Still pale. But alive. 

Slowly the light outside the windows starts to shift and a pale sun rises above the rooftops. Robin makes herself a cup of tea and a sandwich which she has to force down. Bane sleeps. She calls in sick to work. She can't leave him alone, in case he needs her mediocre nursing skills, or if he wakes up. There is nothing she can do but wait. It occurs to her that he might have been delirious last night when he told her he didn't want to go to a hospital. He might wake up and be furious she hasn't called for an ambulance. 

In that case I'll kill him, she thinks, staring out the window at nothing. He's weak. She'll figure out how to get rid of the body later. The thought makes her sick, but her life hangs in the balance. It's him or her. 

All day she stays cooped up in her tiny apartment, a prisoner in her own home, the unconscious Bane a most unwelcome companion. She checks on him, but there's not much else she can do. She changes the dressings and cleans his wounds. One bullet hit his arm, as far as she can tell it's a flesh wound, and another one must have grazed his shoulder because there is a deep gash along it. The wound above his hip seems to her like the most dangerous one. She feels his side with her fingers and tries to determine, with her limited medical knowledge, if something vital is damaged. If the bullet had hit further in, closer to his stomach, he'd be dead by now. But maybe it only went through fat and skin and nothing important.

The stitches he has done himself are as crooked and as uneven as hers. That feels like a relief, until she realizes it makes little to no difference whatsoever. Her gaze keeps flickering to his face, worried that he might wake up. She wants him to wake up, but not while she's leaning over him. 

He sleeps and sleeps and she waits and waits, restlessness and a cold anxious feeling gripping her. 

When day gives into night, he finally wakes up. She's sitting on the couch in the living room, unable to do anything, unable to focus, when she hears a noise. It's faint, like a whisper, but she stands up. Stopping at the kitchen counter she takes a knife, silently, and slips it into the back of her pants. 

He's conscious, and he turns his gaze to her when she stops in the doorway. She can't determine how awake he really is.

“Water,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper, and then he starts coughing. 

He winces, coughs more and puts his hand to his side. Robin goes to the kitchen and fills a glass with water. She holds it out to him when she gets back, then realizes that she should act her part better and helps him sit up. Touching him when he's awake, knowing who he is, feels wrong. It smells terrible in here, but he probably can't tell.

He drinks the water, then looks at her and she feels aware of the knife in the waistband at the small of her back. 

“How did you get me into the bed?” he asks.

“You walked. I helped you.”

“I don't remember that.”

Robin doesn't know what to say. 

“Who knows I'm here?” he asks.

“No one. I haven't told anybody.”

He meets her gaze, as if he's trying to determine if she's telling the truth or not. 

“What's your name?” he says.

“Robin. Robin John-Blake.”

“This is your apartment?”

She nods.

“Does anyone else live here?”

“No, just me.”

He keeps looking at her. Despite the fact that he looks like shit, his eyes are sharp. 

“Why didn't you call the police?” he asks.

It's a bit of a trick question. Finding a man with gunshot wounds in your home is definitely something that demands you report it to the authorities. She has to pretend she realized straight away who he is.

“You told me no hospital,” she says. “You asked me to stitch you up, I assumed...”

“You assumed?”

“That it was important...”

She tries to look as if she is filled with respect for him, but she's not sure how well she pulls it off. It shouldn't be too hard, she does have a lot of respect for him, she's scared of him. Even now, when he sits shirtless and bandaged, looking pale and worn.

“Do you know who I am?” he says. 

She nods. “I think so, yeah.”

He nods a little. “I need to use your bathroom.”

Robin backs out of the way, keeping the knife concealed. His ID card puts him in his thirties, but he moves slowly and puts his hand on the door-frame for balance, like an old person. He grimaces, in pain. Robin wonders how much blood he has lost. Had he gone to a hospital they would surely have given him a transfusion. 

She waits in the hall while he's in the bathroom and she puts the knife back in the kitchen, afraid he will see it and unsure of what he would do if he did. She hears the toilet flush and then the water is running for a long time. If he toppled over he would most likely make a loud crash, but maybe he has fainted while sitting down. Wouldn't that be just great?

She knocks on the door. “Are you alright in there?” she asks, as if he is an ordinary person. “Do you need help?” 

She doesn't want to help him. 

The door opens and she looks up at him. “I tried to clean up a bit,” he says, “but I'm afraid I made a mess of your bathroom again.”

He has washed his hands, but there is still blood on his arms, and it's stuck in the creases of his cuticles too. 

“Don't worry about it, it doesn't matter,” Robin says automatically. It seems strange that he even mentions it, considering that he broke in here last night and made a much bigger mess. The politeness feels out of place. 

He walks back to the bed. 

“Is there someone you want to call?” Robin asks. “I have a phone.”

“No phones.”

He has sat down on the edge of the bed, so now he is looking up at her. 

“Where is the gun?” he asks.

“I put it away. There are no bullets left. Do you want me to get it?”

He shakes his head.

“What do you do for a living, Robin?” he asks her.

“I clean at the church.”

The way he looks at her makes her feel exposed. She has tidied away all traces of anything unusual, except for him. He notices all of this, she is sure of it. He might look sluggish, with those dark circles under his eyes and the clammy sweat on his brow, but he has noticed. 

“I was a police officer, before,” she says, because she might as well come out and say it. It's in her file, so all he has to do is look it up. Still, she feels as if she is incriminating herself. “Do you want something to eat?” she asks. “I can heat up some soup.”

“That would be good.”

“Okay.”

He meets her gaze. “I am grateful for your help,” he says.

In that moment he somehow manages to possess the same authority as when she saw him give the speech outside town hall. It's a feat, considering the state he's in. It's easy to see how he can have thousands of people doing exactly what he tells them to. 

He is saying thank you, but threatening her at the same time. 

She manages a small smile, trying to play dumb. “I'll get you that soup.”

When she comes back a short while later, she's poured the soup into a mug, thinking that it's probably easiest for him to drink it, he has fallen asleep again. He looks younger when he's sleeping, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted. She wants to dump the hot soup right on his face, but she doesn't. She goes back to the living room, eats some herself. 

She reheats the soup when he wakes up the next time. He's sitting up in bed and she hands him the mug, then takes a step back, unsure of whether she should leave him alone or not. 

“What time is it?” he asks. 

She looks at her watch. “Nine thirty.”

He drinks. “This is very good,” he says. 

It isn't, it's a simple chicken broth with carrots and cabbage. She likes it well enough, but she imagines he usually eats a quite different assortment of things. 

He looks at her. “I need you to help me with a few things.”

She looks back. 

“Can I trust you, Robin Blake?” he says. 

She tries not to look nervous, and not like she hates him. She's kept him here without alerting anyone, even though it is obvious he is hiding from his own people. He has to know she knows that. She could take her chances with the authorities, hand him over, but truth is she doesn't know enough, and she is more afraid of him than the rest of them. Rumor has it that he is Ra's al-Ghul's personal protégé and that is why he was put in charge of Gotham City and this zone, one of the most important regions in the country. 

“Yes,” she says. 

She wants him gone, the sooner the better. She figures her best chance to get what she wants is to do everything he asks of her. 

“I need you to procure some things.” 

He makes a short list, clothes and a medicine she recognizes as an antibiotic.

“That will be hard to come by,” Robin says about the antibiotic, “without proof that I need it for myself, it might get reported...”

“Surely you know of some doctor who would be willing to prescribe it, without asking too many questions?”

Robin doesn't reply. Bane looks at her.

“Having that knowledge is not a crime,” he says after a few seconds. 

Still she hesitates. Admitting that she might know of a doctor like that would be all the proof the police would need to suspect her of subversive activity. Naming that doctor would get him arrested. 

Finally she nods. Bane doesn't ask for the doctor's name.


	2. Chapter 2

Robin tries to blend in with the stream of commuters heading towards the subway station. There are more patrols on the streets than usual. It might be a coincidence or it might not. They're looking for Bane, she thinks. How far away from her building was he shot? How long before they search every building in that block, then the next one and the next one after that?

She turned on the radio this morning, while she was preparing breakfast, but there was nothing about Bane on the news. The news are a travesty, of course, nothing but well-trained parrots saying whatever the authorities tell them to say. 

There are people in uniform on the platform too. The sight of police officers hasn't given Robin any sense of security or comfort for a long time. Still, seeing them now she does think about it for a second, about walking up to that young man to her right and telling him that Bane is hiding in her apartment. She could give him Bane's real name, to prove she's telling the truth, although it is unlikely such a low-ranking officer would know it. It's only a fleeting thought. Telling the police would only lead to her own arrest, then exile or death. 

When the train comes in she gets on it, jostling with all the other passengers. Public transport within the city limit is free, so it is a popular means of travel. The other reason, of course, is that cars and gasoline are expensive and a luxury far from everyone can afford. 

Even though it is still early the waiting room at the doctor's is crammed. Crying children with runny noses, elderly people staring down at their knees, and everything in between. Robin doesn't get a seat so she stands by the wall, waiting for her turn. She hopes she's right about this doctor. There was a time she knew more about these kinds of things, only bits and pieces, but she's kept her head down for years. She thinks about those three monkeys, covering their eyes and their ears and their mouth with their hands, and feels that she is all three.

She waits for hours and when it is finally her turn she walks into a room that smells vaguely of disinfectant and more prominently of the doctor's half-eaten lunch, which sits on his desk. 

She spins a tale about her grandmother who has cut herself on a pair of pruning shears. The doctor glances at her when she says what kind of antibiotic she hopes he can prescribe for her.

He nods a little. “I will help your grandmother,” he says. “But it will have to be a one-time occurrence, unless it is for a patient who can come here in person. Do you understand?”

Robin nods. “Thank you,” she says. 

The first pharmacist that she goes to doesn't have the medicine, so she gets on a bus to another one, where she waits for an hour and a half, but at least they have it. 

Her first hand choice to buy clothes would be the church bazaar in the basement of the church where she works, but she can't go there. Not only is she supposed to be home sick, but everyone there knows her and they would wonder about her buying men's clothes.

She goes to another second hand store, in another part of town. It smells of textile and people in there, like a mixture of various homes. She isn't sure about Bane's size. She asked him before she left, and wasn't that a bizarre conversation to have, but as she holds up shirts and pants in front of her she finds it difficult to tell if they will fit him or not. 

There are a few other customers in the store and Robin feels aware of them, even though she just looks like a woman buying clothes for her boyfriend or husband. Only she knows she doesn't have a boyfriend. She used to, before he was taken away by men in uniform. Most likely he is dead. She has talked to Father Reilly about it, because the not knowing was too hard, she just couldn't handle it on her own. At the same time talking about her grief for Bruce with anyone was a risk. You are not supposed to mourn an enemy of the state. 

She picks out a few items of clothing and walks up to the counter. 

“Are they gifts?” the salesclerk says.

Robin feels paranoid. Perhaps it looks suspicious, buying a whole set of men's clothes like this. Maybe it looks extravagant for someone like her. Maybe the salesclerk will report it as suspicious behavior.

“Yes,” Robin says. “My dad turns sixty next week.”

“Oh, that's nice. I'll gift wrap them for you then.”

“Thank you.”

Her last stop is the grocery store. There is a line there too. In addition to the food she puts a box of briefs in her basket. There are three pairs in a box, and three sizes to choose from. She thinks maybe she picked the wrong size, but she doesn't dare to open the box and take out a pair to look at them, nor does she dare to put the box back and pick another. She knows she is being paranoid, but she's afraid of appearing as if she's putting too much thought into it. It has to look natural. She has lingered by the shelf too long and she picks down a box of stockings too, puts them in her basket and moves on. 

She pays for her purchases with Bane's money. It feels wrong, as if the money is stained. It's a relief to leave the store, but she is petrified of being stopped and searched as she walks towards home. It isn't her imagination, there are a lot of patrols out. Sick grandmother, father turning sixty; she isn't sure she can make that sound believable should a police officer ask her. 

There are no vehicles parked on her street, but of course that doesn't mean they aren't waiting for her inside. Her throat is dry, her heart is beating fast. Part of her wants to run, but there is nowhere to run to. The stairwell is empty. She can hear the radio in the grease lady's apartment. 

She walks upstairs with her incriminating purchases. If Bane has been found in her apartment there is nothing she can do. If he has managed to slip out and get away, perhaps if he heard them coming, there is still too much evidence left behind. Last night she sunk the plastic bags with his ruined clothes and the bloody rags in the river. He told her to put a paving stone or a piece of cement in each bag. But he has bled on her bedsheets. The gun is still there. Is there anything she can say that will sound convincing? With a sinking heart she realizes there isn't. 

She puts the key in the lock, turns it until the lock clicks, then pushes the door open. The living room and kitchenette is empty. It's quiet. She takes a step inside and the next she knows someone has her by the throat. 

She drops the bags, her heart stops beating altogether, or so it feels like, and her skin turns cold as ice in a second. 

“Why were you gone so long?”

Bane pushes her against the door so it clicks shut behind her. She grabs his hand, his wrist, tries to pry his fingers off. 

“Answer me.”

Her purse still hangs from the crook of her arm, and she takes hold of the strap, and clobbers him with it. 

It's instinct, defending herself when she's being attacked, but it's also because she is so tired she doesn't think. 

Bane flinches, she got him right in the head, but he doesn't let go. He uses his other hand to rip the purse from her grip.

“I got you everything!” she says. “It's all there.”

He's glaring at her. “Why are you so late?”

“I had to wait in line. Let go of me, I'll scream, the neighbors will hear.”

She pulls at his hand and finally he lets go. She takes shaky breaths, rubbing at her throat. Her heart is beating at triple speed. He is breathing hard too. He doesn't look so good. He has one of her kitchen knives in one hand. 

For a few seconds neither of them say anything.

“There are lines for everything,” Robin says then and she doesn't manage to keep the spite out of her voice. “I've spent the whole day running your errands.”

He looks at her and she forces herself to stop talking. It is quiet, then he nods. She doesn't know what to say, doesn't trust herself not to say what she is thinking, so she picks up the bags and walks over to the table. She can't believe she hit him. She hit Bane, with her purse!

He doesn't say anything about it. She unpacks the groceries and puts the clothes at the edge of the table, gift-wrapped, but he doesn't comment on that either. She takes the small bottle of antibiotic and the parcel with the syringe from her purse. It has survived the blow to his head. 

“Do you need help?” she asks.

“No, you'll be spared that.”

Good. She doesn't want to go anywhere near his ass, although stabbing him with something sharp does have a certain appeal. God, she's tired. She's hardly slept for two days. 

She prepares dinner while he takes a shower. She bought gauze at the pharmacist too, so he can change the dressings on his wounds. She stirs the pot and she feels like crying. 

When he emerges from the bathroom he is dressed in the clothes she's bought. 

“Thank you, for your help,” he says. 

She nods a little, not quite looking at him. 

She wonders if he has searched her apartment while she was out. He probably has, trying to find out as much as he can about her. It makes her skin crawl to think about him going through her things. She doesn't have any forbidden items or anything suspicious, though. Her friend Selina was arrested because she had European pop records, banned because they promote greed and decadence. 

He sits down at the table with her for dinner. He seems too big for her apartment, vastly out of place and unwanted. 

“This...” he says and indicates his arm and his side. “It was my own men.”

She already knows that, more or less. 

“I can't trust anyone in this city,” he continues. “I can only assume that lies have been told, to discredit me and make every officer believe they would be justified to arrest me, or even kill me.”

“Why?” She can't help it. “I thought you ruled this city.”

“I did. There are others who want to do it in my place. They convinced these men to make an attempt on my life. But they failed.”

He doesn't sound angry, not really. 

“I have to contact my family,” he says.

It is odd to think that he even has a family. 

“They can help you?” she asks.

“Yes.” He looks at her across the table. “I need your help to send them a message.”

He knows he's risking her life. He probably doesn't care, as long as he saves his own ass. You did this, she wants to say. These are your people. 

“You'll make a phone call,” he says. “Not from here, from a payphone, to my father.”

“But he doesn't know me, he won't know if I'm telling the truth, or...”

“Not a lot of people have this number, and I will tell you what to say. He will believe you. You don't give your name, even if you're at a payphone you don't know who else is listening. Don't say anything about who you are, where you live, or where I am. Do you understand?”

She nods. He's going to get her killed. 

“Robin,” he says and she looks up. “This loyalty will not go unnoticed. Whatever you want, I will make sure you get it.”

What she wants, he can't give her. But she has to make the phone call. Medicine, clothes, a message to his family. He won't leave until she has done everything he asks of her, and every hour, every minute he is here, she's in danger. 

“Okay,” she says. “What's your father's name?”

He looks at her. “Ra's al-Ghul.”

For a moment the world seems to tilt. 

“He's your father?” she says then. 

“Yes.”

She doesn't know what to say. Ra's al-Ghul is a ghost, both larger than life and invisible, a near myth, and yet signs of his power are everywhere. She can't imagine him as a man with a family, truth is she can't picture him at all. 

No wonder Bane is at the top of the food chain. And she has no choice but to help him. He may be out in the cold at the moment, but that can change. 

Suddenly it dawns on her why the leaders in the different zones, Bane and others like him, don't show their faces. Perhaps it is so that whoever takes Ra's al-Ghul's place one day can become as invisible as he is, all the more frightening because they could be anyone, they could be the man or the woman sitting next to you on the bus, or watching you as you walk down the street. 

She changes the sheets in her bed after dinner. There are dark spots on them, like Bane's presence here. She can't afford to buy new ones, she has to wash them, so she puts them in the hamper. 

“You can have your room back,” Bane says and she twists around. “I'll sleep on the couch.”

I wish you slept in the river, she thinks. 

The next morning he questions her about what she usually does on Saturdays and Sundays. Does she have a family? Friends? How often does she see them? She should go back to work on Monday. She knows what it is about. Will anyone notice any changes in her routines? She should make as few changes as possible. 

After breakfast she goes for a walk in the park. She buys a cup of coffee from the vendor by the entrance. When she has finished the coffee she goes to the library. She picks out two books, romance novels, nothing conspicuous, not that there are any books like that anymore. They burned in the big purge right after the League's so called liberation. 

There is a phone booth on the street just outside. Robin steps inside and the glass walls feels like a mockery. Anyone can see her. Her hands aren't shaking when she grabs a bunch of coins from her pocket, even though she expected them to. Her pulse is quick. She dials the number she has memorized. It feels unreal that she is calling Ra's al-Ghul. 

There is a click, as if someone has picked up the receiver at the other end, but no one says anything. She holds her breath for a second. She has to assume that someone has picked up and that that someone is the leader of the League of Shadows. 

“I am calling on behalf of Bane,” she says. “He says that any and all allegations put forward by John Daggett are false. He requests assistance.”

Silence. She has followed Bane's instructions, said exactly what he told her to say. Is there even anyone there?

“Hello?” she says. 

“Sit tight,” a man's voice says, then he hangs up. 

She hangs up too. Was that Ra's al-Ghul? She steps out of the booth, feeling a bit shaky, and starts to walk back home. When she gets there she has to tell Bane that the only reply she got was 'Sit tight', but when she does he seems satisfied by that. 

She goes down to the basement to do her laundry. She looks over her shoulder to make sure no one is there before she takes the sheets out of the hamper and puts them in the machine. They smell of him. She pours an extra scoop of detergent in the hatch. 

On Sunday she goes to church, like she usually does. She stays for coffee afterwards, making small talk with the other parishioners. Father Reilly asks her if she's feeling better and she says that she is, it was only a cold. On Monday she goes to work. 

She doesn't like her job, but she doesn't dislike it either. She could be much, much worse off. She was lucky she was only a uniform cop, not considered important enough to arrest, or even relocate to another part of the country. The cleaning job was meant to demean her, she knows that, and she used to find it degrading. Part of her was ashamed she felt that way, but the injustice was hard to swallow.

Of course, it is nothing compared to what happened to some of her colleagues. Jim Gordon was arrested straight away and executed. He was her boss, and her friend. There was a rumor that Bane killed him personally, but she doesn't know if that's true or not. Maybe that rumor started because people felt the need to underline Jim's importance. Robin knows his importance anyway, no matter how he died. Still, she thinks about it now, because his alleged killer is at her house. 

She talks as little as possible to Bane. She keeps her nose buried in a book as much as she can, stays in her bedroom. Every day after work she goes to a post-office box. She takes a different route each day, but she is still covered in cold-sweat every time she enters the post-office. It's Bane's box. He has given her the key, assured her that the box is in a name that can't be connected to him and no one is watching it. 

It is empty the first time she checks it, and it keeps being empty. She had assumed that tanks would be rolling down the streets a day or so after she had made the phone call. But nothing happens. 

A week passes, a week and a half. She watches him as he begins to realize that help isn't coming. For a moment she almost pities him. That's his own family, hanging him out to dry. But there is no such thing as loyalty anymore, he should know that. 

He watches her too. She can feel it, the weight of his gaze. She thinks about running. He can't really stop her, not anymore. Father Reilly would help her, if he can, although she hates the thought of putting him at risk. But then what? She doesn't have any money, no resources, nowhere to go. 

She, too, is dependent on the intervention of Ra's al-Ghul. Without it her hands are tied. She can't go to the police, now even less than before. She bet on the wrong horse. She should have let him die. 

“I will need new papers,” Bane says.

She looks at him across the dinner table. It takes her a moment to process what he has said. 

“Would you do me that last favor, getting me the things I need?” he says. 

She nods, because it means she will be rid of him. He will leave, he will finally leave.


	3. Chapter 3

After work the next day she goes to a stationer's shop. She goes to several, following Bane's instructions not to buy everything in one store. He will be gone tomorrow, maybe he'll even leave tonight. She keeps thinking that, over and over. 

When she gets home she makes dinner, while Bane sits and works by her kitchen table. They have dinner. She tries her hardest not to keep glancing at the clock on the wall. How much longer before he is out of her life? Before she doesn't have to look at him anymore?

She has just tidied up when there is a knock on the door. She freezes, the dishrag in one hand, and her heart jumps up to her throat. Bane makes a gesture for her to open the door. She puts the dishrag down and wipes her hands on her pants. He stays out of sight, on the other side of the room, as she walks over to the door and opens it.

The grease lady is outside. Mrs Brown is her real name. Robin is so relieved it's not the police she manages a smile.

“Hi, I'm sorry to bother you,” Mrs Brown says, smiling and showing a row of stained teeth.

She was probably beautiful once, but she hasn't aged well. Her skin looks thin and like it isn't properly attached to her face anymore. She wears too much make up and it piles thick in the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth.

“Do you have a cup of sugar, that I can borrow?” 

“Oh, um, I'm afraid I don't,” Robin says. 

Mrs Brown sighs. “Ah, well, I guess I can live without a sponge-cake. But how about introducing me to your man?”

Robin feels a chill go up her spine. 

“I've heard his voice, but I haven't seen him, and I have to admit I'm a bit curious,” Mrs Brown goes on. 

She lives right underneath. She must have heard them talking. She knows Robin lives alone, but now she has heard a man's voice through the floorboards and she's nosy. 

She tries to look over Robin's shoulder and Robin pulls the door a bit closer to her.

“Now isn't so good,” she says. 

“Oh, why is that? I only want to say hi. It is the neighborly thing to do.”

Robin tries to think. 

“I'm afraid you've caught us at a bit of a bad time,” she says. She smiles, does her best to look embarrassed. She feels sick.

Mrs Brown looks her up and down, taking in that she is fully clothed, not disheveled in the slightest. Robin pulls her hand over her hair in a vain gesture. 

“Perhaps you could come for a cup of coffee tomorrow?” Robin says. 

“Yes.” Mrs Brown smiles, but there is something shifty in her eyes. “That sounds nice. Having a man in the house again does feel good, I have to say, although I never cared for that Mr Roberts who used to live on the third floor. Not a proper man that one, not in my book, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know.” Robin forces a smile, pretending to agree with Mrs Brown's appalling homophobia. Anything to make her leave. 

“Well, I'll leave you to it then.” Mrs Brown smiles again and turns towards the stairs. She glances back at Robin before she starts down the first step and Robin closes the door. 

She turns to look at Bane. He looks back at her.

“Who is that woman?” he says.

“She lives on the first floor. Mrs Brown.”

The look on his face tells her it isn't just in her head. Mrs Brown suspects something. Of course, a man who never leaves the apartment is suspicious. Shit, Robin should have said he was ill, or something, depressed because he is unemployed, anything!

Panic prickles at her hairline, like icy needles. 

“What does she do?” he says.

“Nothing. I think she's retired. She's old.”

“Who lives on the third floor?”

“No one. It can't be rented out, it's water damaged.”

“Give me your ID card.”

“What?”

Robin stares at him.

“That woman is going to report you,” Bane says. He's keeping his voice down, and Robin, too, feels aware of Mrs Brown down there, listening.

“You don't know that. I could go down there, talk to her...”

Bane shakes his head. 

“You have to run,” he says. “Give me your ID card. I'll make you a new one.”

Robin shakes her head in return. She can't leave. This is her home, her life. She has nowhere to go. All the tension she's bottled up this last week and a half begins to bubble up to the surface, and she starts to cry, even though she hates that she does it in front of him. But she can't hold it back. 

“This is all your fault!” she says. 

He looks at her and nods. 

“Now give me your ID, and pack a bag. Not more than one.”

Robin doesn't move. This can't be happening. The police haven't searched this block, and it all comes crashing down because Mrs Brown is a nosy busy-body, hoping to get better accommodations perhaps if she rats out her neighbor? She doesn't even know anything. She can't possibly know who it is that is hiding here, because she probably wouldn't have acted in this manner if she did. 

“Get moving,” Bane says and he walks up to Robin and grabs her arm.

She pulls away, appalled that he's touching her. 

“I can go down there and kill her, to buy us some time,” he says, staring at her. “Or you can start to pack, right now.”

There is a horrible, sick feeling in the pit of Robin's stomach, like something infected. And she feels hollow. But she packs. One bag. On her nightstand are her library books and she thinks about the overdue fines, and that makes her realize she is probably in shock. 

At the kitchen table, in the light from the lamp overhead, Bane is making her a new ID card. She isn't particularly surprised he knows how to do that. 

“We should travel together,” he says as she puts her bag down by the door. “Right now they aren't looking for a couple. We get on the first train out of Gotham tomorrow morning. It's our best shot. And I'll help you.”

Apart from the nod before, that's the only admission of guilt he gives her. He has ruined her life. And she was so close to being rid of him. Now you know, she thinks, what it is like for the rest of us. But she's not even sure he sees it that way. Perhaps he is unable to connect what's happening to him now to what he has put hundreds, thousands of other people through. 

She walks over to the table. It requires sleight of hand, making fake IDs, and he his surprisingly deft for a man with such big hands. The one he has already made for himself sits on the table top next to him and she notices that the last name is the same on both of them. 

No one is looking for a couple. 

“How many people know what you look like?” she asks.

“A few, but not that many.”

He hasn't shaved since he came here, so a beard has changed his appearance somewhat, and the ordeal he's been through, being shot, has caused him to lose some weight. 

He looks up at her.

“You are safer with me,” he says, matter-of-factly. 

Robin walks over to the sideboard, opens one of the drawers and takes out a small box. The box is just a cardboard one that once held a tea-strainer, but inside it are her grandparents' wedding rings. She slips the smaller one onto her left ring-finger. It fits. 

She goes back to the kitchen table and places the other one on the table top. Her grandfather was a large man, worked with his hands all his life. It may fit Bane.

“See if you can put it on,” she says. “It might help make things look convincing.”

Bane looks at her for a second, then he takes the ring and puts it on. It fits. 

“Good thinking,” he says.

She goes to sit down on the couch. She doesn't want to look at him. She thinks about Father Reilly and the other, few friends she still has. Will she ever be able to come back? Even this apartment, small and damp though it is, is her home and she doesn't want to leave. 

She thinks and thinks, but she doesn't see a way out. For her inner eye she sees Mrs Brown's face. She may look like an old tart, but she's no idiot. Robin is sure she got Mr Roberts evicted. Of course, being gay is not a crime so she couldn't get him arrested. Now she has something on Robin, something much worse. 

Bane stands and he hands her the new ID card. Linda Richardson. Two years older than Robin. Hair: Black. Eyes: Brown. Marital status: Married. 

“Why that name?” she asks.

“It's a common name.”

His ID card is an ordinary one too, not military, and it says his name is Eric Richardson. 

He cleans away all traces of the making of fake IDs, rips up their old ones and flushes them down the toilet. He packs his few belongings in her spare suitcase and then they leave. Walking past Mrs Brown's door Robin holds her breath. She can't hear a sound from behind the door, but it stays closed.

Out on the street it's dark and the air smells of the river. It's thirty minutes until curfew. She doesn't even know where they're going. She should know that, but she is too numb to ask, or maybe just afraid to break the silence. 

They walk three blocks and Robin imagines there are police officers lurking in every shadow, but the streets are deserted and they aren't stopped. Bane leads the way down a flight of stairs, right next to a building, and Robin thinks that they are going into the cellar, but they don't. 

“We wait here until morning,” he says. 

Of course, the cellar door is locked, and breaking in might attract someone's attention. Instead they stay there in the dark, out of view from the street. The stairwell smells of rotten leaves and urine.

Robin sits down on her suitcase after a while. Bane stands, then he crouches for a bit, his back against the wall. It's so dark she can barely see him. He doesn't say anything and she doesn't say anything. She doesn't want him to, there is nothing he can say that would make anything any better. Not even an apology would have any meaning. She is trapped with the thoughts in her head, going round and round and round. 

She leans her head in her hands and closes her eyes. It quickly gets cold, sitting there, but it doesn't bother her. Nothing can compete with the fact that she has left everything and everyone she's ever known behind. 

Slowly, after what seems like a never ending night, the first shimmer of daylight makes the shadows shift. She sees Bane check his watch. Curfew lifts in time so that people can make their way to work. 

A car goes by and Robin wonders if it is a patrol car. She wonders if Mrs Brown has made the call yet. What if she never will? What if all this is in vain? But deep down inside she knows Mrs Brown will alert the police. It was there, in the ill-concealed glee on her face. A small, terrible part of Robin wishes she had asked Bane to go down there and kill her. She doesn't know if he would have, and she doesn't really mean it, but she is just so angry. 

Bane makes sure the coast is clear, and then they leave their hiding place. Robin's legs are stiff. They walk towards the subway station. She's sweating, even though she's freezing. At the sight of a patrol car her heart begins to pound in her chest.

“You're walking too fast,” Bane says in a low voice. 

She slows her step. It doesn't feel natural. It feels as if they are walking in slow-motion. They join the commuters down the stairs to the station. It's a good thing it is crowded, because she sees a man in uniform and her instinct is to run. She turns away, afraid that if he looks in her direction he will see straight away on her face that she's on the run.

On the train she is pushed this way and that way, as more and more people jostle to get on before the doors close. She nearly loses the grip on her suitcase, but gives it a pull and it bangs against her knees. She is squished between Bane and a woman with a guitar case, which she holds in her arms as if it was a child. 

For a moment Robin closes her eyes and pretends she's on her way to work, like any other day. How long will it take before Father Reilly gets worried when she doesn't show up? She hopes she hasn't gotten him into trouble. 

She wants to move away from Bane, aware of her shoulder pressed against his chest, but there is no room. 

Downtown they get off, and follow the flow of people up the stairs to the street. There is a lot of traffic here, a lot of people. The train station is large, one of the grandest buildings in the city, and there are people going in and coming out through the doors in a steady stream. It is also heavily guarded, uniforms everywhere, or so it seems to Robin as soon as they step inside. 

If anyone of them recognizes Bane, she's dead. It's not unimaginable that someone might; she did. 

She assumes she's walking too fast again, because Bane takes her arm, then he takes her hand. She wants to shy away from the touch, but she knows she has to play her part. Linda Richardson, on her way to a holiday with her husband. That was the only thing he said to her all through the night. The story, the one they both need to be clear on and stick to, in case they are asked any questions. 

So she holds his hand, walking past police officers and travelers. 

“Wait here,” he says and stops all of a sudden. “I'll only be a minute.”

They're right outside the luggage storage and the restrooms, and he disappears through the door. Robin waits, trying to look inconspicuous, however that is done. Do nothing, she thinks. She's waiting outside the restrooms. No one will look twice at someone doing that.

She doesn't know if Bane needed to pee or what, she has a feeling it was about something else, but he soon comes back. He takes her hand again as they make their way through the station. He buys two tickets in one of the booths and then they make their way to the platforms. 

There are uniforms there too, watching the crowds. Bane is tall, that is a bad thing, it's not possible to hide. And how much of a disguise is a beard, really? It's easy for a man to grow one. 

Robin can feel her pulse, ticking in her ears. They will spot him, she's sure they will. 

“Turn to face me,” Bane says after a moment. 

She does. He meets her gaze.

“Now smile,” he says.

She does that too. 

“No one here knows me,” he says. 

The train sluggishly rolls into the station. People start to get off and they wait. Robin grips the handle of her suitcase tightly and her palm feels sweaty. Then, miraculously, they get on. 

They travel third class, in line with how they look, the clothes they are wearing, the tattered suitcases. That means there is no food or drink to be had on the train for them. Robin feels now how thirsty she is, and hungry. There's nothing to do about it. She's tired too. She leans towards the window, so that if she falls asleep she won't end up leaning against Bane. 

She doesn't think she will sleep, but she does. When she wakes up they are passing wide, empty fields. Black trees with few leaves left on the branches are sharply outlined against the gray sky. She needs to pee and stands up.

Bane looks at her.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” she says, feeling as if she is as much his hostage now as she was in the apartment. At the last minute she remembers they aren't alone and smiles at him. 

She goes to the bathroom at the end of the carriage. It is tiny and it smells bad, but there is toilet-paper left and the water works. It's not drinkable, though. When she comes back Bane goes. A man shows up, he comes through the door from the next carriage, and tries to sit down next to her.

“This seat is taken,” she says. 

He smiles.

“It clearly isn't,” he says.

“No, it is.”

She puts her hand on the backrest, to prevent him from sitting down. She feels panicky. Who is he? Is he a police officer?

“There are no seats in the other carriage,” he says. “So I'd like to have a seat here.”

He's still smiling. It's scary. 

“My husband sits here,” she says. 

The man makes wide eyes, as if that is astonishing news.

“I don't see him,” he says. 

An older woman, sitting on the other side of the aisle, leans forward.

“Her husband has just gone to the bathroom,” she says. “I suggest you leave her alone.”

It begins to dawn on Robin that the man isn't some secret agent who is on to them, he's just a creep.

Bane shows up then. He looks at the man, who looks back, then quietly slips back to the other carriage. Bane gives Robin a questioning look as he sits down.

“He wanted your seat,” she says. For some reason she feels embarrassed about the whole thing. 

“It's unbelievable,” the woman on the other side of the aisle says. “Harassing young women on a train like that. Some people have no shame.”

She's knitting, something pale blue. For a grandchild, perhaps, a baby boy. Robin turns her gaze to the window. 

At the end of the line they get off. A chilly wind hits them as they step onto the platform. There is a vendor who sells hot dogs and bottles of water on the street outside the station building. Robin doesn't have much money, but Bane pays for both of them. He must have gotten hold of more money, what he had on him when he broke into her place is more or less gone, and she's thinking that trip he made to the luggage storage and restrooms at the station in Gotham City. Did he have a stash or something there? She should ask him about it later, in case he has more of those. It would be good to know if they get separated, or if he decides to ditch her. She's not sure he will tell her, though, she could ditch him. 

They eat. It tastes great, a lot better than it should, but hunger does that. Bane eats one more than she does. Then he buys two extra bottle of water and he asks the vendor how the tap water is in this town, if it tastes like iron or chlorine. The man smiles and says that it is okay, not that great. Of course, he's happy to sell this picky couple the water bottles. 

It's in the middle of the day and not that many people are out and about. It's not a very big town. 

“When it gets dark we walk across the border to the next zone,” Bane says. 

“You know which direction it is?” Robin asks.

He nods. 

“We can't cross the border by train,” he says. “I don't know who they have placed at the station.”

He doesn't know if it's someone he knows, is what he means. If they had boarded a long-distance train in Gotham, one that was bound for another zone, they would have been demanded to show their IDs there, asked about their business, possibly also have had their luggage searched. And then there are controls at the borders between the zones. The further away they are before they have to do that, the better. Robin's nerves alone would have caused a problem in that situation. 

“Do you know how far it is?” she asks.

“If we walk through the night, we're across come morning.”

“Then what?”

If she's going with him, he better have something to offer, she thinks. If not, she's better off on her own. 

“We head for Seattle,” he says. “There's someone there, whom I can trust.”

Robin stares at him. Is he really that naïve? His own father wouldn't come to his rescue, she assumes because of some political play, or just plain sociopathy. Does he really think there is anyone he can trust?

“No,” she says. “That's not a good idea.” She almost doesn't know how to say it, but there really isn't any reason for her to be considerate of his feelings. “Your dad abandoned you, there's no one you can trust.”

He turns his gaze to her. 

“This is different,” he says after a few seconds. 

Robin shakes her head. 

“She can help us get out of the country,” Bane says. “Both of us, assuming you want that, and I recommend that you do.”

Robin turns her gaze away. Seattle. That's on the other side of the continent, they would have to pass through a lot of zones to get there. 

“She will help,” Bane says. 

He seems convinced, but a few days ago he still believed that his family would help him. 

“Is she your girlfriend?” Robin asks. “Wife?”

“No. She is the leader of the Seattle zone, and I can trust her.”

Nothing he says makes it sound any better. Everyone he knows are people like him. Robin knows that part of her just want to get away from him, and that is clouding her judgment, but she also knows that her best bet is to stick with him. She has no way to get out of the country on her own, she doesn't even know in which direction to start walking. 

“Okay,” she says.


	4. Chapter 4

It is cold and her suitcase is heavy. There is barely any light to see by and she trips several times. But she doesn't complain, even though she could, because it's all his fault. That is harder than the ache in her muscles and the bone-deep tiredness. She is stronger than she looks, cleaning the church is heavy work, but the unfairness, she doesn't know how to deal with that, the anger that makes her head boil. 

She thinks about Bruce. He came from money, but of course he lost all that when the League confiscated everything in order to evenly distribute the fortune to the people. Although Robin sure didn't get a share. But he had this thing that he did, sometimes, when he brought her breakfast in bed. He'd imitate a butler, the gracious manners, being overly polite, calling her ma'am, but he did it stark naked. It was so stupid. It was so funny. It was so good. Especially because it wasn't really his style to act silly like that. 

She doesn't know why she is thinking about that now, except that she is alone and she misses him. She didn't realize how much she loved him, until he was gone. It didn't seem all that serious at the time, their relationship, and she wishes... No. There is no point in wishing. She knows better. 

Bane stops and she stops too. They drink some water. 

“Are you sure we're going the right way?” she asks. She has to, she can hardly see a thing.

“Yes.”

Maybe he has a map of the country tattooed on the inside of his eyelids. She assumes he has military training, so maybe that is why he is so certain of his ability to navigate in this terrain in the dark. She used to be a cop, but she navigated city streets and back alleys. 

When the sky begins to shift from black to a pale gray she sees a farm in the distance. It's difficult not to imagine warm rooms and hot food. She's hungry. They could have bought food, except it would have looked suspicious. Strangers stocking up on food. Someone might remember that, someone might even report that, especially since the town is close to the next zone. 

“We'll head to those trees,” Bane says, “and wait there. We can't cross open fields in daylight.”

“Are we across the border?”

He nods. 

“How far to the next town?”

“About four hours.”

Daylight is frightening in a way it has never been before, even when they are sitting in the woods, hidden from view. Someone might come by. It is difficult to imagine a patrol out here, but it all depends on what kind of search has been organized. Robin thinks about how many hours has passed since they left the apartment. What might Mrs Brown have said? Is it possible that they have worked out that it must have been Bane who was hiding there? Surely there are other fugitives too. 

Robin thinks of the people she knows, her friends, and the thought of any of them being questioned, because of her, makes her feel sick. 

She pulls her coat tighter around her. 

“Are you cold?” Bane asks.

She doesn't answer him. She doesn't need, or want, his concern. 

They wait. He looks tired. He can't be fully healed yet, it's too soon, and no one is immune to hunger and exhaustion. 

“Can you stay awake for a while?” he asks a little later.

She nods. 

“Wake me if you're tired,” he says. 

As soon as dusk settles they continue. When the woods clear they pass fields where crops most likely grow in the summer. The lit up windows of a house can be seen in the distance, like yellow dots. 

After a few hours they reach the top of a hill, and on the other side of it is a town. It's a blanket of yellow and white dots. Robin stares as if she isn't quite sure it's real. But then she remembers that civilization does by no means equal safety and the feeling that it might be a mirage dissipates. 

“Should we wait until morning to go down there?” she says. 

“No.”

“But it must be past curfew.”

“They don't have one here.”

“What?”

She has never heard of a town that doesn't have a curfew. She assumed those rules were nationwide. 

Bane points to the sight in front of them and it takes her a moment before she realizes what he's pointing at. A number of tall chimneys, letting out steam that can be seen even in the faint light.

“Those factories run twenty-four seven,” he says. “People work in shifts. They don't have a curfew, because people have to get to and from work round the clock.”

“Have you been here before?”

He nods. 

They start downhill. They still need to sneak into town undetected, but they manage that. Bane knows his way around. He knows where the train station is, but they don't head straight there. There won't be a train until morning. Maybe he's been here recently, but Robin begins to suspect that he has an amazingly good memory. 

On one street there is a restaurant, a bar and a cafe right next to each other, and all three are open. There are people out on the streets. Robin hasn't seen anything like that in years. There are restaurants in Gotham, bars too, but everything closes before curfew. This is a much smaller town, but there is a kind of nightlife. 

“Are there a lot of towns like these?” she asks, because she can't help herself.

“A few. Industrial towns.”

They go into the cafe and sits down opposite each other at a table. The menu is printed on a piece of hard paper, propped up against the wall. 

“Hi, what can I get you?” The waitress is young. Pretty. Hair in a ponytail. 

About half of the other tables are occupied. 

“Try to say something now and then,” Bane says to Robin in a low voice when the waitress has left. “It doesn't matter what.”

They eat and then they have coffee. It feels good to be indoors, to not be cold and hungry. But they can't sit there all night, after a while they have to get up and leave. Since the streets aren't deserted they don't stand out, but there are a lot of patrols and they have nowhere to go. A car goes by just as they leave the cafe. 

They walk down the street, then up the next until they find a dark gateway in an office building where they aren't in plain sight from the street and they wait there. It seems moderately safe, until there are voices just around the corner, and Robin realizes that the bobbing light hitting the piece of sidewalk she can see from where they're standing is from a flashlight. Walking patrols have flashlights. 

She grabs Bane's shoulders, pulls him close and kisses him. She doesn't have time to think. In a fraction of a second he gets it, and puts his arms around her, kisses her back. 

The light hits her, blinding her for a moment. 

“Hey,” a woman's voice says. “Take it inside.”

Robin blinks. There's two of them, a woman and a man, both in uniform. The woman directs the flashlight to the sign on the wall, which says that in this building you'll find a dentist's office, a funeral home and a secretary agency. 

“You don't live here, do you?” the female officer says. 

“No, officer,” Bane says. 

The officers make disdainful faces. 

“This is a public place,” the woman says. “Go home, or get a room.”

Robin nods, eagerly as if she is embarrassed to get caught like this. 

“Yes, officer,” Bane says.

As if by a miracle, the officers walks on. Robin supposes that they get a lot of this kind of thing around here, perhaps they even assumed she was a prostitute. And they didn't spot the suitcases.

“Have some class, man,” the male officer says, his voice drifting back to them. 

Robin grabs her suitcase and she and Bane head in the opposite direction. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. She's not sure if he sees it, he's not looking at her, half a step ahead of her. His mouth against hers, she pushes the memory of it as far back into her mind as she can. She doesn't want to think about it. 

The train station here is much smaller than the one in Gotham City. The train they're boarding is a long-distance one, though, bound for another zone and they have tickets to the end of the line. That means that they have to pass through border control. An officer asks to see their IDs. 

“State your business,” he says after he has looked at both of their ID-cards and Robin has silently prayed that Bane's work is up to mark. 

“I'm going to apply for work,” Bane says. “We've been relocated.”

That is a bold lie. Relocation means there is paperwork. Should the officer not believe them, he will detain them while he phones the population office. Of course, no population office anywhere will have heard of Eric and Linda Richardson.

But it is also the best explanation for why anyone would be traveling between zones. They are too shabby-looking for such far away holidays. 

“What's your occupation?” the officer asks.

“Mechanic, sir.”

“And your wife?” The officer glances at Robin, even though he's addressing Bane. 

“She's a cleaner.”

The officer hands them their IDs back and waves them through. Robin glances at Bane as they walk towards the platform. He's a good liar. His whole demeanor changed. And the zone they're heading to is the country's foremost manufacturer of cars, so it's very believable a mechanic would be needed there. Detroit was once the automobile capital of the country, but the League relocated the industry, because it was deemed unwise for there to be such a large population so close to the Canadian border. 

This time they have bought sandwiches, some apples and water for the journey. They get seats by a window, opposite each other. It's cramped for room and their knees touch. Robin stares out the window and the train begins to roll. After a while she starts to feel vaguely nauseous. She chalks it up to exhaustion and closes her eyes, but she can't fall asleep, and the feeling of sickness swims in her stomach, makes her head spin. 

She's sitting with her back towards the front of the train. She's always had trouble with that, but it is such a mundane problem that she didn't even remember it. 

“Would you mind switching seats?” she says to Bane. “I feel sick, going backwards.”

He nods and get up. They change seats with each other, a bit awkwardly since there isn't much space to move around. Facing the front of the train her nausea quickly dissipates. The woman she was sitting next to before, who is now next to Bane, smiles a little at her. 

The niceness of women on trains. There was that elderly lady on the other train too. Maybe it's just because they aren't in a big city anymore. Or maybe there is something about Robin, something about how she comes off. The wedding ring, perhaps. 

“Do you feel better?” Bane asks.

She doesn't know if it's for the benefit of the other people in the carriage or not. He has those odd bouts of politeness.

“Yes,” she says and smiles a little, before turning towards the window again. 

When the train stops at the last station in this zone, officers come aboard the train. They check the tickets and IDs of all the passengers that remain on the train. The officer who looks at theirs barely glances at them. Another man in their carriage gets asked a lot of questions. Robin doesn't know why, she doesn't know what it is about him that makes him appear suspicious in their eyes, and she wants to know, so that she can keep from making that same mistake. 

She looks at Bane and he calmly looks back. Finally the officers march the man off the train, even though he has said to them, several times with increasing panic, that he is a photographer and he has gotten a job at a newspaper in Chicago. 

Robin's pulse doesn't slow down until long after the officers are gone and the train is moving again. 

It's in the middle of the night and Robin is sleeping when they are told to get off the train. The conductor walks through the carriages, declaring that a carriage has to be replaced. 

They get off onto a small platform, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There is a small station building, but nothing else. Outside the lit up platform the night is a solid black. It is snowing lightly and it looks like a curtain draped along the edges of the platform roof, because out of the light's reach the snow seems to stop.

The station building is locked and they don't unlock it for the waiting passengers. Robin feels cold and wraps her arms around herself. She and Bane stand close to the outer wall of the station. 

“That man on the train,” she says, keeping her voice down. “Why was he taken?”

Bane doesn't reply right away.

“His papers might have been fake,” he says then.

“Our papers are fake,” Robin whispers. 

She glances at the other passengers, but no one is close by.

“His clothes were new, his glasses looked new,” Bane says. 

“He'd just gotten a new job, a good job, he might have wanted to make a good impression.”

She looks up at Bane.

“They'll phone the newspaper, if he is who he says he is, he'll be released,” he says. 

“But you would have taken him in for questioning too?”

“Probably. He didn't sound convincing.”

Robin thinks about it, goes over it in her head. Maybe there was a slight tone of arrogance to the man's voice, at the very beginning, like maybe he was trying a bit too hard to sound self-assured. 

She thinks about Bane and the humble way he has behaved every time they've been face to face with an officer. She never did any undercover work when she was a cop, she was a beat cop. But maybe he has. He used to run an entire zone, and yet he manages to pull off a very convincing act of being a nobody. Who knows what kind of training high ranking officers of the League of Shadows go through. He has to be good, or he wouldn't have surpassed all ranks to become who he was. Although, Ra's al-Ghul is his dad, so maybe he got there because of nepotism. 

“Do I sound convincing?” she asks. She has to ask, way too much depend on it. 

Bane nods. “You're doing fine,” he says.

When they are finally let back onto the train they don't get their window seats back. Someone else has been quick to grab them, and most other seats are taken too. They find only one available seat and Bane lets her have it. After a while they switch. Robin could sit on his knee, they're supposed to be a married couple, it would look very convincing, but she can't make herself do that, so she stands. 

When they arrive they have to show their papers again, and they are asked more questions this time. Robin plays the timid wife and lets Bane do most of the talking, having concluded that out of the two of them, he is the best liar. He used to be on the other side, he knows what they're looking for. That's an advantage she doesn't have. 

It's a relief when they are allowed to pass through. This is a much larger and busier city. It's daytime and easier to blend in with the crowd. 

They walk past a hotel, close to the station, that looks much too grand. Bane has a sense of the general direction and as they walk the blocks quickly start to look shabbier and shabbier. They find a hotel that rents by the hour. It says so on the blackboard nailed to the wall by the reception, the hourly rate is stated there. They still have to show their IDs, though, that's the law, and the manager writes down their names in the ledger. 

They get one room, for one night, anything else would look strange for a married couple. Robin is too tired to care. She doesn't believe Bane will try anything, he had plenty of opportunity at her place if that was what he wanted. 

The room is small and the only furniture is an old double-bed and a coat-rack. Robin takes her coat and shoes off, but then she lies down on the bed as she is. Her back is aching and lying down feels like a luxury she had forgotten it existed. Bane goes to the bathroom, but then he comes back and lies down next to her. She keeps her eyes closed, trying to pretend he isn't there. She just wants to get some sleep, proper, uninterrupted sleep. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't move, maybe he has already fallen asleep, and she falls asleep soon after finishing that thought.

When she wakes up she stares at the peeling paint on the wall. She feels miserable. Getting some rest, a moment of seeming safety, was supposed to make her feel better, but instead it has the opposite effect. 

She goes into the tiny bathroom and takes a shower and changes into clean clothes. 

“Do we have any food left?” she asks when she comes out from the bathroom again. 

“No, but there is a shop right next to the hotel.”

“I'll go.”

He hands her some money. She wonders how long the money he has will last, and she wonders, when it begins to run dry, if he will think he has gotten her far enough. How many train tickets, hotel rooms and meals does he think he owes her, for making her a fugitive?


	5. Chapter 5

Bane says they shouldn't travel too closely to the Canadian border, the search for fugitives will be concentrated there. So they go south into the Midwest. 

They find another hotel room, in another town, that rents by the hour. Two officers, each with a girl on their arm, are in front of them at the reception. The girls are clearly prostitutes, wearing short skirts and low-cut tops that must be appallingly cold in this weather. Robin hears the officers ask for adjacent rooms. Perhaps they plan to switch, before their hours are up. 

The woman behind the counter looks surly, but smiles when it's Robin's and Bane's turn. 

“I'll get you our best room,” she says, apparently not happy about how she most likely makes most of her business. 

The best room is clean, and it's on the top floor so the window overlooks the roof of the adjacent building, above it the sky is wide. 

Robin heads straight for the bed and lies down. It feels as if she's in some strange kind of limbo that she can't see the end of and it's weighing down on her. After a moment there is a knock on the door. Bane has just pulled his sweater over his head, planning to take a shower perhaps, and Robin looks at him in alarm. She thinks about the officers, although they appeared to have other things on their minds. 

He opens the door and it's the lady from the reception, carrying a tray.

“I thought maybe you'd like some tea,” she says. She puts the tray down on the small table by the wall. She smiles. 

“Thank you,” Bane says. 

“This used to be a respectable place,” she says, a look of embarrassment on her face. “Well, um... please let me know if there's anything you need.”

She smiles again and leaves. Bane closes the door. 

“Do you want tea?” he says.

Robin decides that she does and sits up. There is a pot and two cups on the tray, as well as some crackers. The tea is strong and hot. The small cup looks almost comical in Bane's large hand. The collar of his shirt is dirty, because he's been wearing it for several days. 

“I suppose you aren't used to places like these,” Robin says. “Or maybe you are.” She laughs a little. 

He looks at her. “You think I rent rooms by the hour, like those two officers?” he says. “I don't.”

She doesn't really know if she thought that. She doesn't even know why she said it. She eats a cracker.

“Why did you become a police officer?” he asks all of a sudden.

The question takes her by surprise.

“I don't know. Um... to make a difference, I guess,” she says. 

She looks at him. The beard makes him look a bit older, but his face is young. He's just a few years older than she is. Of course, young is relative, she has passed thirty.

“What kind of difference?” he asks. 

She hasn't thought about these things for a while. 

“Helping people,” she says, because she doesn't have any inclination to go into detail.

“In what way?”

“Is this an interrogation? Why do you want to know?”

He just turns is gaze away.

“Why did you join the League of Shadows?” she asks in return.

He pulls his hand over his beard, unused to having it perhaps. 

“To make a difference,” he says, throwing her own words back at her, although by his tone of voice it's unclear if he's mocking her or not. 

Robin puts her cup down and scoots back up on the bed.

“It doesn't matter, because when you people showed up, I wasn't a police officer anymore.”

She lies down. 

“The old structures had to be purged,” Bane says. “But it wasn't a perfect solution, there are those who would have been well-suited to continue their service.”

She supposes he means that as a compliment, or a half-assed apology that she was demoted to cleaner. She's on her side, her back to him, so she can't see him. 

A while later she takes a shower and puts on her last change of clean clothes in the bathroom. Bane is sitting on the bed, counting the money, when she emerges. He doesn't try to put it away or hide it. 

“How long will it last?” she asks, afraid to phrase it more specifically. In the back of her mind she thinks that she has to be nicer to him, not pick any fights. 

“It can get us to Seattle,” he says. She notes the 'us' in there. 

She nods. 

The room feels cramped. Except for when either one of them has gone to the bathroom, they've been together day and night, day after day. Robin says she's going down to the reception to ask if there are any books she can borrow, just so she has an excuse to leave the room for a bit. 

The lady at the reception is very helpful and takes out a small stack of books from behind the counter. She's also very talkative. She tells Robin that this used to be one of the nicest hotels in town. Of course she doesn't criticize the regime, but Robin gets the sense that she blames the League of Shadows for turning her place of work into a glorified brothel, and Robin tries to change the subject. 

“Your husband is very handsome,” the lady says after a while and smiles. “How long have you been married?”

Robin smiles back. “Not very long,” she says. 

The nosiness makes her uncomfortable. She's wary of nosy old ladies. 

“Well, I better get back, or he might wonder where I got to.”

The lady laughs. “Of course, silly me, prattling on. I'm sorry for keeping you.”

Robin smiles and heads back upstairs. She half-expects Bane to grab her as she steps inside the door, demanding to know what took her so long, but he is in the bathroom, washing up clothes in the sink. Both his and hers, she sees. That doesn't sit quite right with her, for some reason it seems too private, but then she decides that if he doesn't mind handling her dirty clothes, she won't tell him not to. 

She puts the book down on the bed.

“Do you need help?” she asks.

“No.”

She can't imagine that he washed his own clothes as leader of the Gotham zone. She sits down on the bed. 

“That reception lady is nosy,” she says. 

Bane glances at her. 

“I think she just likes to talk,” she says. “But you should go down there later and ask her if she sells condoms.”

Bane looks at her.

“I just went down there to borrow a book,” Robin says. “But I said we haven't been married very long, that's our story, so it would look a lot better if it seems as if we're planning to do something other than reading too.”

He nods. “No, it's a good idea,” he says. 

This is why she lived a quiet little life, without making any ripples whatsoever. Keeping up appearances is complicated. It's not difficult to appear as if you have nothing to hide, when you really don't. And at the same time, it seems cowardly. 

They keep heading west. Bane is very specific about where he wants them to cross the Rocky Mountains and Robin has no opinion on what route they take. He's gotten them this far. But in hindsight she wishes she had objected, for whatever reason, because that's where their good luck runs out.

**

Officer Keller has two more shifts to get through before he has a week off, during which he plans to go skiing with his kids. They're teenagers and he's lucky they want to spend any time with their old man at all, so he's happy to go down black slopes if that's what it takes. 

He finishes his coffee and rinses his cup in the sink before he puts it back in the cupboard, then he heads downstairs. His office is on the second floor, with quite a nice view of the park behind the municipal building, but on the first floor are the holdings cells and interrogation rooms. They are next to each other in a long row on each side of a corridor that ends neatly right at the door which leads to the courtroom. 

The people's court isn't in session right now, because the municipal judge is out for lunch, and her seat, placed high up on a platform, is empty. That is just as well, because this isn't a court matter, at least not yet, but since she's out they can use the spacious room. The holding cells are almost full as it is. 

A rather large group of people stands on the floor, guarded by officers. This morning they made raids on all the trains arriving at the station. It's a sample control, intended to put a damper on the increasing lack of control over people's movements across the country. While that is probably true, Keller isn't an idiot. When the orders came down he was certain that there are a number of people that the League hopes will wind up in the net. Who they are, he can only speculate.

This group are those who weren't cleared on sight. Only a few were, military personnel, a surgeon who had a signed letter from the leader of the Tennessee zone, which was verified as quickly as possible, since he was on his way to perform an important surgery in a town a little west of here.

Keller nods to his fellow officers, who start to shout at the group to form an orderly line, pushing at those who are slow to follow the order. 

He goes back to the corridor and heads to the last interrogation room. As he takes his seat behind the table he is joined by Morrison. He silently wishes it would have been one of the others. Morrison is... tacky. If Keller had been in charge of this office, which he is not, he would rather have put Morrison in one of the holding cells, instead of arming him. But asking to change assistant officer would draw too much attention to the matter, and Keller is not out to make enemies. He is the senior officer in the room, though, and that will have to do.

He hears the trample of feet in the corridor outside, the closing of doors, and then the first two train passengers are shown into his room. It's a couple, a tall man and a skinny woman. 

“Papers?” he says.

They both hand over their IDs. Eric Richardson and Linda Richardson. Married. 

“Any children?” he asks.

“No.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Denver.”

“What's your business there?”

“We've been relocated.” It's the man who answers. 

“Do you have jobs waiting for you?”

“No.”

“We wanted to move there,” the woman says. “To be closer to his parents, so that we can both work, when we have children.”

Keller looks at her. “Are you pregnant?”

“No. I don't think so.”

She stares at a dark spot on the table, which Keller thinks is dried blood, and judging by the look on her face she has come to the same conclusion. 

“Where do you come from?”

“Boston,” the man says. 

Keller will have to check. This is going to be a long, long day.

“Open your suitcases,” Keller says and rises from his seat. “Put them here on the table.”

They both do as they're told, the woman is quick to oblige, the man a little slower. Keller sifts through their belongings. A few changes of clothes each, a worn paperback that looks like a romance novel, nothing hidden inside it, toothbrushes and toothpaste, a soap, a box of condoms, a hairbrush. He feels the lining of each suitcase, but nothing seems to be hidden there. These are poor people and he doesn't want to put a knife through their bags unless he suspects something. 

“Your handbag,” he says to the woman. “And both of you, empty your pockets.”

The man has a wallet with a little money in it, nothing else. Keller looks through the woman's handbag. A change purse, a comb, a hair slide, a box of sanitary pads, paper tissues, a water bottle – he unscrews the cork and holds the bottle under his nose, it is water – a paper bag with two apples, a box of mints, but there are no mints in it. His guess is she has saved it because there is a pretty picture on the lid. He turns the bag inside out, feels the lining, but nothing is sewn into it. 

“Take off your clothes,” he says as he puts the bag down. 

They do it, everyone always does, but it is with reluctance, gazes lowered. It's standard procedure and any law-abiding citizen, loyal to the cause, has nothing to fear, but he supposes it doesn't help matters that Morrison stands there, sneering, as if the sight of people's genitals is something comical. 

The man has a couple of injuries that look recent. 

“What happened there?” Keller asks.

“I fell, working in the woods, injured myself.”

“You're a manual laborer?”

“Yes.”

The man has other scars, that look older. There is something sluggish about him, though, and there are a lot of injuries in those kinds of jobs, it's not unimaginable that he'd have accidents. The woman has red marks on her arms, but Keller has seen that before, someone has been rough moving her from the train onto the truck.

He goes through their clothes. He's efficient about it, finds nothing, then tells them that they can get dressed. He does linger, if only a moment, so that they have their clothes on before he leaves the room to phone Boston. 

He will make this journey up the stairs countless times today. He goes into his office and takes out his phone book. He calls the population office in Boston and is put on hold, but after only a few minutes his call goes through. 

“My name is Officer Marcus Keller, I am calling from New Jericho. I need to check the relocation orders of an Eric Richardson and a Linda Richardson.” He reads their respective personal identity number from their IDs. 

“One moment.” 

It takes more than one moment. Keller is not surprised by this. He's seen the state of the population office's archive here in town and he imagines Boston has a much larger one. 

“Okay,” the voice finally says on the other end of the line. “I have them here, but, um...”

“But, what?”

“Well, there's been an accident. They're stained.”

“What do you mean 'stained'?”

“I don't know, it may be coffee... But the names and the personal identity numbers match. They have both been relocated from here.”

“To where, and on what date?”

“I'm afraid that's unreadable. I'm very sorry.”

Keller sighs. “How can both of them have coffee stains?” he says.

“I'm guessing they were processed together, before being filed. It's a married couple.”

“Okay, thank you.”

He hangs up. The sloppiness of the Boston office aside, nothing seems to be amiss here. The Richardsons are an ordinary couple, with the proper paperwork. 

He heads downstairs again. The man may be a bit slow, but he looks strong as an ox and Keller took notice of the fact that the woman looked healthy. 

“I have confirmed your relocation with the Boston office,” he says. “However, since you do not have assigned jobs waiting for you in Denver, I am sending you to our population office here, for re-processing.”

There's a quota. The orders came a few days ago. Keller isn't fond of relocating people against their will, something he and his officers are sometimes called upon to enforce. This couple are already en-route, prepared to start a new life elsewhere. 

It's the woman who gets a look of panic in her eyes. 

“Don't worry,” he says. “I think it's in Florida that they need people, the weather is much nicer there, and you'll be guaranteed work. It's a new town, I'm sure they will have thought of childminding.”

At least that's what he heard. Florida. He hands them their IDs back. 

“An officer will show you the way.” 

They take their bags. Neither one of them says anything as they leave the room.


	6. Chapter 6

At the population office new paperwork is drawn up. Robin can read it upside down as she sits in the visitor's chair in front of one of the desks, burning with her inability to do anything. Linda Richardson, relocated from Boston to Denver, re-routed in New Jericho. Destination: Florida. 

The woman behind the desk is pretty, her nails are painted pink. 

“Can't you let us go to Denver?” Robin asks. “My husbands parents live there, and they were supposed to...” She leans a little closer. “I think I'm pregnant, and they were going to watch the baby.”

“I'm afraid I can't do that.” The woman smiles a little sympathetically at Robin, who most likely looks as miserable as she feels. “I'll make sure that it is put on both of your relocation orders that you are not to be separated, and cross-reference the papers with your personal identity numbers, okay? That way, if someone calls here, about another relocation, you'll get to stay together. That's all I can do.”

Robin wants to scream. Or hit something. She does neither. 

She and Bane are given an envelope with enough money for a train ticket to their destination, but any hope of slipping away, get on another train or even hike to another town if they have to, vanishes as they are accompanied by guards to the train station. 

It's some sort of drive. Maybe what that asshole officer said is true, it's a new town and they need to populate it with workers. 

She doesn't want to think about the questioning, but she does anyway. The humiliation of being forced to strip and stand there naked in front of strangers. She wants to scrub the memory of it from her mind, remove it so it never happened. The fear that they would find the money, too much cash for two people like them to have on them, made her feel sick. 

It was Bane's idea to hide them inside a box of sanitary pads, a couple of notes slipped into each individual parcel. She can only assume that he'd seen that done. A drawback was that she had to carry it. He was a bit reluctant to let her take that risk, but Robin said it didn't matter, thinking to herself that it was much to late for him to start worrying about her safety now. If the money was found they'd both go down anyway. Their luggage was bound to be searched sooner or later, so for a while now she has carried around the world's most expensive sanitary pads.

They didn't find the money, and they didn't arrest them. She tries to think about that. But how much money is left? Not enough to get them both from Florida all the way to Seattle, assuming they can slip away again once they get there. 

The train comes in and they get on it. It is an old train and it smells vaguely of cigar smoke, but it is more spacious and comfortable than what their third-class tickets are worth. It's not full either, far from it, and they sit down in a compartment all by themselves. Robin almost wishes there had been more people, something that could distract her. 

She turns away from Bane when the train starts to roll away from the station, so he won't see that she's crying. She has to cry, at least for a little bit.

After a while the tears stop. Outside the window it is so black that all she can see is her own reflection. Their ID-cards have to be pretty spotless, she thinks, no one has looked twice at them. Bane told her that even if someone made a phone call to check their story about relocation, the paperwork would most likely hold up. How did he do that?

She turns her head. 

“So there are really relocation orders for Eric and Linda Richardson in Boston?” she says.

Bane nods. 

“How?” she asks.

“I placed them there.”

“What if we had to take a different route, or if someone had called earlier, when we were leaving Gotham even?”

“There are papers there too.”

He looks at her. He must have placed identical, or similar, papers, in several places.

“What if they're found?” she says.

“That is unlikely. The archives are enormous.”

She wouldn't know, she's never seen one. 

“Are there any relocation orders in Florida?” she asks.

“No.”

It is quiet, except for the chugging of the train against the tracks.

“So, did you always expect you'd need a quick getaway one day?” she says. “And did you always plan on leaving with a woman?”

“Just a contingency plan. If I had left alone, no one would ever have found out that there was a Linda Richardson.”

Still, there is a hopeful note somewhere in that, isn't there? In the event that everything goes to hell, there might be a girlfriend in the picture at the time. He wanted to be able to bring someone with him. Or he planned for an unwilling accomplice. Who knows. 

Now they will know that there is a Linda Richardson, though, she thinks, since it's in their papers that they're not to be separated. She doesn't tell him that. She'll save that until she needs it, so he doesn't have time to come up with another contingency plan. She doesn't want to get stuck in Florida. 

It's late afternoon when they arrive in Greentown, Florida. Probably not that much thought is put into the naming of new places. On the station building there is still a temporary sign that reads 'Location 295-985'. 

It is much warmer than where they came from and Robin is sweating in her coat. Her head hurts. She hasn't been relocated before, not like this. She was forced to leave the apartment she had in Gotham and move to the other one, but that was within the same city. That was right after the League of Shadows came to power and a whole lot of people were being allotted new homes and moved around. 

Here she doesn't know her way around and neither does Bane. 

“Will someone meet us?” she asks Bane. 

“I think so,” he says. 

He's probably never overseen the procedures in person, too much of a big shot for that. She thinks about him getting undressed alongside her in the interrogation room, all the soft places of the body exposed. Did he feel violated, outraged, embarrassed, scared? Or did he think those officers were doing their duty and had he been their commander he would have congratulated them on a job well done? 

The platform quickly gets crowded. Most people seem to be between the ages twenty and forty, and most carry only one suitcase each. A family with three young children are struggling with a crying toddler and their bags. 

A line forms up to the doors of the station building. When they get a little further along Robin sees that there are men and women in uniform up ahead. She wants to take her coat off, but at the same time she wants to keep it on, keep as many layers of clothes on as possible. 

The officers have clipboards with typewritten lists on them, handwritten changes in the margin. 

“IDs,” says the female officer they end up standing in front of.

They hand them over. She checks her list. 

“We have a house for you,” she says when she have found their names on the list. “What kind of jobs have you had before?”

“Cleaner,” Robin says. 

“Farm worker, lumberer and mechanic,” Bane says.

Robin knows that she is being truthful, but she has no idea if he is. Of course he can't say 'soldier', or 'commander', or anything like that. 

“Okay, we need cleaners. You report to the municipal building tomorrow morning, seven o'clock.” She looks at Robin.

“Yes, officer.”

She checks another list. “And there are jobs in agriculture, if you can do repair work on machines that's an asset. Report to Warehouse 7, seven o'clock. It's west of town.”

They get a note, with their new address on it and are waved through.

“Next,” the officer says behind them. 

The town is right there in front of them when they step out on the other side of the station building. It's flat. The houses are square, like building blocks, and the streets are empty aside from a couple of patrol cars and a few of the people who were ahead of them in the line. In the twilight it looks like a ghost town. They start walking down what has to be the main street. There is a grocery store and a restaurant. Everything looks new, this has all recently been built. In the distance there are larger buildings, a couple of tall chimneys.

“Why did you say you've had those jobs?” Robin says in a low voice. “Have you?”

“I wanted to stay off the assembly lines,” Bane replies. 

That's smart. Working in a factory means doing the exact same thing over and over again. You get worn out quickly. 

“I could have said something else,” Robin says. Secretary. Kindergarten teacher.

“You're in the municipal building.”

That's true and chances are that the League of Shadows are located in the same place. She will have access to that building.

Eventually they find their house, after reading every street sign in the entire town, or so it feels like, and walking without any clue of where they should be heading. The house is divided in two, so some other people will live in the other half, but each half has its own door and there is a small patch of grass at the front. The keys are in the lock. 

The whole street is deserted. A few palm trees stick up here and there, but aside from that it looks as if whatever was here before was bulldozed and then this block was constructed on top of it, rows of identical one-story houses. 

The door is a bit stiff to open. Inside it smells faintly of paint and of stuffy air. The house consists of a combined kitchen and living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. The walls are white and it is sparsely furnished. 

Standing there and seeing it a sense hopelessness comes over Robin. Not because the accommodations are simple, she's used to that, but because they're stuck here for who knows how long. As long as they were on the train she could almost hope that they weren't headed southeast, the exact opposite direction of where they want to go, and that somehow when they got off the train they would find themselves in Seattle after all. Now she can't. 

Bane doesn't say anything. He puts his suitcase down on the floor and goes into the bathroom. Robin is thirsty and she shrugs off her coat and hangs it over one of the two chairs by the small kitchen table. In a cupboard she finds three plates, two glasses, two coffee mugs and a couple of saucepans, one small and one that's a little bigger. She drinks a glass of water and checks the top drawer. Two forks, two knives and one spoon. 

In the living room a large crack runs vertically across the wall. This house may be new, but it was built quickly. 

The bed is a double. One set of cheap bedsheets has been provided and lies in a pile at the foot of the bed. They'll have to share. The couch in the living room is too small and hard for either one of them to sleep on. She tells herself it doesn't matter, they have shared in hotel rooms too, but that was when they were in transit. They slept with their clothes on, ready to leave the next morning.

Robin washes off in the bathroom a short while later. The towel feels rough against her skin, but after a few washes it'll turn soft. She knows because she used to have towels like these. She puts on her nightgown and brushes her teeth.

The bed creaks when she lies down in it and the bedsheets smell faintly of the plastic wrapping they came in. She's tired, but sleep feels far away.

“How big is the risk that they'll find out we aren't who we say we are?” she asks. It goes against her strategy to pretend he isn't there, but she has to know.

“The only papers are the relocation orders,” Bane says. “If they follow the paper trail, they won't find any birth certificates or anything else. It was only meant to be a way out, never a long term solution.”

Robin stares into the shadows. 

“We'll keep our heads down,” Bane says, “and not give them any reason to look closer.”

“Do you know anyone here?”

“Not that I can trust.”

“I don't mean that. Is there someone who might recognize you?”

“The leader of the Florida zone, but he's in Miami. We're unlikely to run into him.”

It's quiet for a moment. 

“I never wanted this to happen to you,” Bane says then. “For you to have to leave your home, become a fugitive.” 

Robin keeps her head turned away from him. It's dark in the room, but she doesn't want to face him. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. 

It's too late. Even from the start it was too late. She doesn't say anything, because there is nothing to say.

“I will get you out,” he says. 

Robin doesn't move. What if he can't?

“Okay,” she says.


	7. Chapter 7

The morning sun shines in through the window, sifts through the piece of cloth Robin has hung up as a makeshift curtain. For months she has worked seven days a week – everyone in town has – but more trains have rolled in and the empty houses and vacant positions have filled up. Now they get Sundays off.

She's awake but her body feels too heavy to move. She stares at the narrow gap between the curtain and the wall, where the sunlight is so bright, a blinding gold. When she closes her eyes for a moment the stripe is there on the inside of her eyelids, dancing in different colors. 

She hates Florida. She hates the heat, the relentless sunshine and the heavy rainfalls. She hates this house with its paper thin walls, through which she can hear the neighbors at night, their bed creaking as they moan. She hates that she had to ask Bane to come meet her after work, in the hope that the size of her so-called husband would scare off her slimy boss from making any more advances. 

She turns her head and glances at Bane. He is still sleeping, his long eye-lashes resting against his cheeks. He has gotten tanned, working outdoors every day. He is broad-shouldered and muscular, has hair on his chest but none on his back, the kind of body a lot of men would envy, and a lot of women would find attractive. It doesn't help. It's survival, she thinks as she moves closer to him. 

He has gotten more and more quiet. She has passed on every single little thing, no matter how trivial, that she's managed to pick up during her shifts at the municipal building. What he does with this information she does not know, because he doesn't tell her. Making plans to skip town without her? It's not unthinkable. He said he would get her out, but that was then. Months of living in fear of being discovered can wear a person down, dissolve his resolution, and his loyalty.

He is lying on his back. He's shirtless and his skin burns hot as a furnace when she shifts her body to lie alongside his and presses her face against his arm. He wakes up right away. She can tell because he moves, ever so slightly. 

She keeps her eyes closed. His smell fills her nose – masculine, somewhat familiar, and too much. For a few seconds he doesn't do anything and she thinks that maybe he sees right through her move. But then she feels his hand on her head, stroking her hair. She's not pretending to be asleep, that would be too exaggerated, so when he turns onto his side she looks at him.

His hand is still on the side of her head and he holds her gaze. His eyes aren't gray, like it said on his ID-card, but a mixture of gray and green, there are even specks of blue and brown. After a few seconds he leans closer and puts his lips to hers. 

His lips are soft. The kiss is surprisingly gentle. His breath slides over her face and his beard scrapes her chin as he kisses her again. That's his mouth on her mouth, his hand holding her head before sliding down to her waist. That's male vanity, she thinks. For all his intelligence he doesn't question this. 

Things progress quickly. She had promised herself she wouldn't think as she did this, but her mind won't shut down. Her body's response is weak when he's touching her, because she doesn't want to do this and she can't erase that. She fakes enthusiasm as best she can, but she can't escape the revulsion she feels when he pushes in. Without a condom, because he didn't stop to fetch one and she didn't want to risk her determination slipping away from her. 

The sunlight paints the bedroom yellow and the bed creaks. Bane's body is big and warm on top of her. His breathing is quick, close to her ear. She feels him move inside her and she just wants it to be over. She tries to not really be there, but the intrusion brings her back. It feels like a long time, but it probably isn't, then he presses even closer and his body tenses as he comes. 

He catches his breath for a moment, his cheek resting against hers, then he pulls out, leaving a wet, sticky feeling behind. He moves off her and lies down next to her. Neither of them say anything. In the silence Robin thinks that the neighbors probably heard them, heard the bed because they were both of them quiet. She didn't know that about him. Now she does. 

Bane moves his hand so that it touches her side. She wants to move away, but she doesn't, instead she turns her head and looks at him. 

She remembers seeing the tanks roll through the streets. The panicked voice on the radio, the last broadcast before it went silent, saying that the president is dead, the military has taken over. She remembers the chaos, the fear, shots ringing out. And she remembers Bane, stepping out onto the stairs outside town hall, imposing, black boots, moving with ease, because this, the facades of the buildings studded with bullet holes and people frightened into silence, it was his world. It was his doing. 

He raises his hand and gently strokes her cheekbone with the back of his fingers.

“This was unwise,” he says. “You could get pregnant.”

She is very much aware of that and the thought of carrying his child is nauseating. She wonders if he, too, is thinking about the box of condoms that they've had since they stayed at that hotel with the nosy manager. 

“I know,” she says. 

She imitates his previous gesture and touches the back of her hand to his ribs. She isn't some femme fatale, nor a trained spy, she doesn't really know how to do this. Allowing him to use her body to satisfy himself is one thing, but she wants to make him like her.

It is quiet. He takes her hand in his, just for a moment, then he gets up. When it's her turn in the bathroom she steps under the water spray and tries to wash him off her. She can smell him on her, smell his semen between her legs and she feels sick. Never again without a condom. She refuses to cry because she feels that if she were to start she wouldn't be able to stop.

It's their day off so after breakfast they go for a walk. This is a small, isolated town so the selection of things to do for fun is limited. The biggest draw is the beach, so they go there. Robin holds Bane's hand. They often do when they're out in public, it's part of their cover, looking as if they are a married couple, but now it feels different. The boundaries of intimacy have shifted, or rather been torn down, and somehow it is as if she can sense that where their palms are pressed close together and his fingers are wrapped around hers. 

She doesn't want to think about it, so she does her best to push it far, far into the back of her mind, but it's hard.

It's a hot, sunny day and she can feel sweat form on her back. The beach is a half moon of white sand, stretching out in both directions, accommodating a belly of blue-green water. People sit on blankets and towels, scattered like islands on the sand. There are families, children play close to the shoreline where the sand is wet and easier to mold, and couples. The only larger group of people are some teenagers who sit together.

Robin and Bane sit down straight on the sand. They don't own any swimwear, but far from everyone does. There are a lot of things you need to buy before you get to the luxuries, if ever. Robin takes off her shoes and socks, and rolls up the legs of her pants. Bane takes his shoes off too. The top buttons of his shirt are already unbuttoned, and the sleeves are rolled up. It's because of the heat; she hasn't gotten the impression that he is particularly vain.

He's trimmed his beard, though, and he's been to the barbershop and gotten his hair cut. Robin knows he's a good looking man. She is reminded of it when Rita, one half of a couple they've shared a table with at the diner a few times, smiles coquettishly at him, even though her husband is sitting right next to her. Or when Cali, her co-worker, told her she was a lucky woman, after she had seen him one time when he came to meet her after her shift. She is just unable to share the sentiment. 

She pours coffee into the two cups they've brought. It's lukewarm because the thermos doesn't keep it hot. The air smells of salt. Laughter drifts over from where the teenagers are sitting. They seem happy, carefree, but the gathering is not as boisterous as Robin remembers from her own teenage years. 

There aren't any good beaches in Gotham, the coast line is all industries and warehouses. She learned to swim in a public swimming pool that smelled strongly of chlorine and dried out your hair. Yet she wishes she was back there. She wishes it so much it hurts, and the unfairness of it all threatens to choke her.

In her teens the local hangout was just some street-corner where everyone gathered, or the movies when you had the money for it. She and Selina went to a few parties, had some illicit drinks and flirted with boys. They stole dresses from a store on Fifteenth Street, to wear to one of those parties. Robin felt guilty about it, but also entitled because she didn't have anything. She just wanted to be able to compete with the girls who seemed to have everything, at least for one night.

Bane watches the teenagers. 

“It seems so long ago,” Robin says, just to say something.

He nods. She has difficulties picturing him as a teenager, even though she knows he must have been one. Pimples and insecurities and getting a boner during math class, or whatever those years are like for boys.

He turns his head and looks at her. 

“Do you miss it?” he asks.

“Being a teenager? No.” 

She misses her friends, Selina most of all, who are now almost all of them gone. 

“Do you?” she asks.

“No.”

He drinks some of his coffee and looks out over the water.

“What did you do, when you were that age?” she asks. 

What do you do when you're the son of Ra's al-Ghul? Practice marching in the backyard? 

“I went to school. Studied.”

“Is that all you did?”

He glances at her. “No.”

“Did you have a girlfriend?” 

He nods. 

“But I was in college then,” he says.

Hearing him talk about himself feels strange. School, girlfriends, ordinary things. She tries to come up with a reply. A joke about being a late bloomer. Another question. Something about herself. But everything seems forced. 

“Why do you ask?” he says, turning his head to look at her again.

She shrugs a little, but inside she goes cold. He'll see through her.

“I'll stop with the questions,” she says. She puts her fingers in the sand. It runs across her skin, softly, like a caress.

She can feel his gaze on her and she is aware that he isn't likely to be easily fooled. Sometimes she thinks he knows that she didn't know who he was when she found him bleeding in her bathroom. She pretends she did know, because she helped him and she didn't call the police, and had he been anyone else that would have proved her to be a dissident. 

“Do you regret this morning?” he says then. 

Regret is just one of many words.

“No,” she says and turns her head to look at him. “Do you?”

“No.”

She manages to smile a little. 

It feels like a twisted travesty of trying to talk to a one-night-stand in the awkwardness afterwards. Except she's never actually had a one-night-stand, so she doesn't know what that's like. She's only ever had sex with boyfriends. And now him. 

He smiles back then. A closed lips smile, but it's the first time she's seen him smile at all. It softens his features. 

She's afraid he'll try to touch her, or kiss her, but he doesn't. 

They stay a little while longer at the beach, then the masquerade is over and they head back. If not even he can see how she loathes him, no one else can either, she thinks as they walk towards the town. She thinks of Father Reilly. Would he be appalled? Maybe. Or maybe not. He lives in this world too, the world where you do what you have to, to survive. She has never killed anyone. She has never denounced anyone. She's only sold her body, but maybe that can be forgiven. 

**

Greentown is a small town, and more importantly, it is a new town. The population office isn't stacked to the rafters and in disorder. They can't hide in the anonymity of a crowd. Getting on a train without being observed would be impossible, as the train station is small and there are only two tracks. If they don't show up at work they will be missed within minutes, a search would be launched and on foot they have no chance of escaping. 

Every day they risk that someone will look them up, for whatever reason, and find out that Eric and Linda Richardson don't exist. Robin feels the threat of that hanging over her head like a physical thing, a weight pressing down on her. She would be arrested. Part of her wants to ask Bane what will happen to her if she is arrested, but another part prefers not to know. She'll disappear. She will not dwell on what happens after that, but it scares her to death all the same. 

**

There is a line snaking down the sidewalk outside the grocery store. Robin goes to stand in it after her shift is over. There's not a lot of talking, but there is a restlessness in the crowd, surfacing as shifting of weights from one foot to the other, craning of necks to see inside. Everyone is worried that things will have run out before they get in. The first few weeks the store was always well-stocked, but now the honeymoon is over. 

Eventually Robin gets through the doors. She picks up a shopping basket and makes her way through the aisles. There are gaps in the shelves; tomato sauce and rice have been out of stock for weeks, pepper too, which causes most dishes to taste bland. In the refrigerated counter there is just one packet of pork shops left and she puts it in her basket. Perhaps some, or many, of those behind her in line will be disappointed. It isn't fair, she knows it isn't, but giving them up to someone else won't feed everyone in town anyway, it's only two pork chops. 

She'll fry them up tonight, and Bane can have one today and one tomorrow. There are leftovers from yesterday that she can eat. Bane cooked dinner yesterday, and every time he does he greatly overestimates how much she eats. 

He isn't back from work yet when she gets back to the house. She can hear a murmur of voices through the wall, the neighbors talking, but other than that it is quiet. She forces a window open to let in some fresh air, but there is hardly any breeze. 

Bane comes through the door just as the sun disappears behind the treetops. Robin looks up from the stove.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.” He glances at the window. “You're letting the mosquitoes in.”

“You can close it if you want.”

After they have eaten dinner Bane takes out a deck of cards. 

“Do you want to play?” he asks.

“Um, sure. Where did you get that?” she asks. 

“Bought it. We don't have to play.”

“No, let's play.”

They don't have a radio and there is no real library in town, only a couple of shelves in the entrance to the church, with a few copies of a limited number of books. Robin thinks she, and Bane, might have read through them all by now. It's almost a blessing to be so tired after work that you just want to sleep. 

Robin puts the coffee kettle on the stove and then they sit down at the kitchen table. She and Father Reilly used to play cards, in his office, each with a cup of coffee or sometimes a whiskey. Being occupied with something else made talking easier, and not talking too. She misses him. Her one constant throughout her life. And she worries about him. The thought that they might have come after him, because of her, makes guilt press down on her chest, so heavy that it's hard to breathe. 

Now she plays with Bane. She opens the window again, it's so stuffy in here. The sound of the crickets playing in the tall grass outside the window drifts in through the gap. Maybe they could cut the patch of grass in front of the house, but they don't have anything to cut it with, and no one else on the street does either. Frankly, Robin doesn't give a shit.

Bane wins the first hand and they play again. 

“Is there any coffee left?” he asks.

“I think so.”

He gets up and she holds her cards so he won't see them. 

“You want more?” he asks.

“Yeah, I can have a little.”

He wins that hand too, and the next. He keeps on winning and it annoys her more than she wants to admit. 

She looks at him across the table and he looks back. No way he can be that lucky. 

“Are you cheating?” she says. 

He smiles.

“Oh my god.” She throws down her cards. “Why?” 

They aren't even playing for anything!

“Just wanted to see how long it took for you to notice.”

He looks amused. 

“Let's play again,” he says. “I won't cheat.”

“No, I don't want to.”

“I can teach you the trick.”

“No. I'm going to bed.”

She gets up from the table. Fucking jerk!

It's dark in the bedroom, only a sliver of moonlight falls in through the gap between the curtain and the wall. She feels the mattress dip when Bane gets into bed behind her. She wants her own bedroom, her own bed. 

“I'm sorry I beat you at cards,” he says after a few seconds of silence.

That's not even an apology! Robin stares at the window, too pissed off with him to answer, but then she remembers she has to play nice and tries to calm down. It is surprisingly easy. The whole thing is, in fact, entirely trivial. And he's teasing her. 

When that dawns on her she turns around. She can only just see him in the faint light from the window. 

“I don't like cheaters,” she says.

“I noticed.”

“Where did you learn how to cheat at cards anyway?”

“The army.”

It is quiet for a few seconds.

“It wasn't funny,” she says, but she doesn't sound very angry when she says it. 

“It was a little funny.”

She doesn't know how to handle this Bane, who suddenly has a goofy sense of humor. She's never seen that side of him before. This, right here, is where she really has to play her cards right. 

“Are you very angry?” he asks.

“I should be.”

He's looking at her and even though it's too dark to clearly see his expression, she knows he's going to kiss her, and she scrambles to prepare herself. 

It's an odd contrast, how she steels herself for something so gentle. Because he his gentle when he puts his lips to hers. His nose brush against hers. They just kiss for a little while. No tongue. Then he strokes her hair, his face still close to hers. She has to reciprocate, so she puts her hand on his shoulder, his skin is warm and smooth under her fingers. 

She recognizes this moment, even though it is the last thing she wants to think about right now, but she's been here before. The vulnerability of tenderness, the intimacy of being still and breathing the same air. The last person she was this close with was Bruce and she hates how those images are in her head now. Those are her memories and she doesn't want them tainted by this, by lying here with Bane, pretending to have the same feelings for him. 

He pulls his fingers over her cheek and she makes herself smile. She makes herself kiss him once more. It's a relief when he doesn't take things any further, but just kisses her back, then says good night. 

“Good night,” she replies. 

He moves away, just a little, but enough so that she feels she can breathe. Her personal space has shrunk to only a foot or so since she met him. 

When she wakes up it is still dark. It takes her a moment before she realizes that she is alone in bed. She has time to panic, thinking that he has taken off and left her here, before she hears him. The sound of retching coming from the bathroom. 

For a while she doesn't move. She can pretend to be asleep, he won't know. But then she gets up anyway. She has already played nurse once. 

Bane is sitting on the bathroom floor by the toilet. He glances at her, then ducks his head and throws up. 

“I'm gonna get you some water,” Robin says. 

She goes to the kitchen and lets the tap run until the water is cold. She doesn't feel a thing, no stomach ache, no nausea. The pork chops, she thinks, the ones she wouldn't let anyone else have. 

She brings the glass of water back to the bathroom. 

“Thanks,” Bane says. 

He drinks some, then throws it up almost straight away. It's gross, but she's seen worse. She pets his back, a little awkwardly perhaps. 

“No,” he says. 

She takes her hand off his shoulder. 

Food poisoning or stomach flu, either way he is thoroughly sick. 

“Are you cold?”

It's not really cold in the bathroom, but he's only wearing briefs. The white ones she bought in Gotham City.

“No. You don't have to stay here.”

He sounds exhausted. He closes his eyes. 

“Okay,” Robin says after a moment. “Call if you need anything.”

She goes back to bed. If it is stomach flu, she's bound to get it too. Although, if she would begin to feel sick to her stomach she'd be petrified it's caused by something else. 

The next morning he has stopped throwing up, but he looks decidedly worse for wear. 

“You can't go to work,” Robin says when he starts pulling on his clothes. 

“I have to.”

“No, you don't. I'll go out there and tell them you're sick.”

She looks at him and he looks back. Whatever reply he had in mind, he drops it.

“Okay,” he says. 

“You've never taken a sick day before?”

“Not many.”

He lies down in bed and Robin goes out to the kitchen. She still doesn't feel even vaguely sick. She throws the remaining pork chop in the trash. 

She leaves the house earlier than usual, because she has to walk all the way out to warehouse 7 and back before her shift. Both men and women work on the farms, but the majority are men. It's heavy work. A few early-birds stand in small groups, smoking, not talking much, waiting for their shift to start. The fields that stretch out in every direction are vast. The water sprinklers look like huge metal monsters, and the millions of water drops glitter like diamonds in the pale morning sunlight.

“Excuse me,” Robin says to a man who stands by the entrance to the warehouse. “I'm looking for the foreman.”

“You're speaking to him.” 

He looks to be in his early fifties, graying hair beneath a worn cap. 

“I'm Eric Richardson's wife. He's sick and can't come in to work today.”

The foreman nods a little. 

“You're Linda?” he says, squinting at her.

An uneasy feeling spreads in her stomach. What has Bane said about her?

“Yes.”

“You're not what I expected.”

“No?”

He shakes his head a little. “I thought you'd be prettier.”

Something sinks through her, landing with a heavy drop inside. The insult catches her off-guard and she doesn't know what to say. She can't say anything, this man is Bane's boss. 

“I don't mean no harm,” he says. “My little woman is anything but a beauty, but she's worth her weight in gold. Eric is a smart man, I'm sure he knows your value.”

Robin doesn't know what to make of it, if it's meant to be some far-fetched compliment, or if he's just screwing with her, or worse, if it's a disguised threat. She feels panicky, because anyone scrutinizing her and Bane's so-called marriage is cause for panic. 

“Well,” she says, “he needs a sick day. I'm sure he'll be well again tomorrow. Stomach flu.”

The foreman nods. “Alright,” he says. “Good of you to let me know. I'll expect him back tomorrow then.”

Robin nods a little in return and then she turns around and heads back towards town. 

When she gets back to the house, late in the afternoon, Bane is sleeping. There's no air in the bedroom and she opens the window. She turns around to find him awake.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Do you feel better?”

“Yeah.”

She walks around the bed.

“I talked to the foreman at your job,” she says. “Have you said anything about me?”

Bane frowns. “No. Why? What did he say?”

“He was sort of rude. I'm just worried he suspects something.”

“I don't think so. He is an odd man. Rude in what way?”

“It doesn't really matter.”

“Tell me what he said.”

She feels stupid, as if the insult is somehow the issue, when it really isn't. 

“He said he thought I'd be prettier. That's all.”

Bane looks at her. “I'm sorry, I don't know why he would say that.”

He takes her hand. She lets him; she lets him interlace his fingers with hers. 

“You're very pretty,” he says. 

She doesn't have to fake her embarrassment. 

“I'm just worried he thinks something is off...”

“No, you don't have to worry about him.”

“Okay.” 

They are still holding hands. She thinks he might say something more, but he doesn't. He just rubs his thumb across her knuckles. 

A couple of days later she sleeps with him again. Using a condom this time. Afterwards they lie close to each other, her head resting against his chest and his arm around her. She can hear his heart beat.


	8. Chapter 8

Eating at the diner in town is a waste of money. Sure, the food is cheap, as is the beer, but they should be saving as much as they can for their getaway. It's part of their cover, though. Socializing, to a degree, never anything beyond small talk and pleasantries, but they are seen. People who keep themselves to themselves too much are bound to have something to hide. 

Robin can't help but to wonder what people see when they look at them. A couple in their mid-thirties. No kids. Perhaps people think they're saving up for starting a family. Perhaps they think that either she's barren or he is shooting blanks. Perhaps they think that they are perfectly happy with this little life the two of them have in sunny Greentown.

They hold hands as they leave the diner and start to walk back to the house. It's part of the show they put on, but the lines have blurred. The things they do in public are outmatched by the things they've done when they're alone. It's all a terrible mess. In his head it's a budding romance. 

The night air is warm and thick with humidity, as if it's clinging to the day's sunlight. A patrol car goes by. It's thirty minutes until curfew, though. They have fifteen minutes to spare when they walk through their front door. Robin flicks the light switch. 

Bane freezes next to her, but it's only for a fraction of a second, and then he's charging the man in the living room.

It's as if her mind catches up in instalments. There's someone in their house. They've been found. White hot terror engulfs her and she hears the sounds of the scuffle as if from a long distance away.

She's seen fights before, but not like this, not where both parties know exactly what they're doing. The other man is smaller than Bane, but he's fast. She considers running, but where would she go? The house might be surrounded. 

The two men crash to the floor. Bane uses his greater weight to his advantage, pinning the other man to the floor, his knee on his throat.

“Talia sent me,” the man says, his voice strained and barely more than a whisper. “Hear me out.”

“Why should I trust you?” Bane says. 

“I skipped town, right after they went after you. I heard about it, and I managed to get out. Shit, Bane, I can't breathe.”

“I should kill you right now.”

“Don't. I went to a shitload of trouble to find you. I'm here to get you out.”

Robin edges closer. The man isn't wearing a uniform. He's in plain, dark clothes. Brown hair, a beard. 

Bane moves his head slightly in her direction, but doesn't take his eyes off the man.

“Get something to tie him up with,” he says.

They don't have any rope and the best she can come up with is Bane's belt, which he is currently not wearing, and her own. 

“Tie his feet,” Bane says when she comes back with them.

She does and then Bane ties the man's hands behind his back. He plucks a gun from a holster the man has underneath his jacket, and a knife from his right boot.

“Talk,” Bane says.

“I made it to Seattle, I figured that's where you were headed. But then you never showed up, and Talia sent me to find you.”

“How did you find me?”

“I went through all relocation orders, people leaving Gotham, followed every single trail, until I found the right one. I thought you'd be alone, so, clever move.”

Robin feels cold. 

“How?” Bane says. “If you're a wanted man, as you claim you are.”

“Well, I didn't tell them I was a wanted man.”

It's clear these two know each other, and judging from the sass of the tied up man, Robin is guessing pretty well too. 

“How many of you are here?” Bane asks.

“I'm alone. My guys are waiting a little north of here. I had to sneak into town by myself, this place is heavily guarded. That factory isn't a radio plant, they're making parts for missiles.”

Bane nods as if he knows this. Robin doesn't, it's news to her. 

The man on the floor looks at Bane.

“Come on, man, you know I wasn't in on it. They waited until I was off-duty.” 

“If Talia sent you,” Bane says, “is anyone else looking as well?”

“My intel isn't very good, but as far as I've heard, they're not even sure you left Gotham. Daggett's guys told him they clipped you good.” The man squirms a little. “I could testify that they sure as hell didn't.”

“Shut up.”

“Daggett probably thinks you crawled up in a hole somewhere and died.”

“How could he believe that, if there isn't a body?”

“Maybe he believes what he wants to believe. You breathing would be his worst nightmare right now.”

Bane stares at him. 

“You need to talk to Talia,” the man says. “I have a plan.” He looks at Bane. “If I wanted you dead, I would have taken you out from a couple of thousand meters away.”

Bane takes a deep breath. 

“No fast movements, or you die,” he says.

“Good to see you too.”

Bane unties the belts. Robin takes a step back as the man gets up on his feet, wincing slightly. Bane is holding the gun. 

The man glances at Robin. He has pale blue eyes.

“This is Robin,” Bane says. 

The man gives a slight nod. “Nice to meet you. I'm Barsad.”

Robin doesn't say anything because she doesn't know what to say. Her pulse is quick in her ears. 

“What's your plan?” Bane says.

“I head back, get my guys, and we come here with an order for your arrest. Your alias' arrest. I'll impersonate a senior officer from another zone.”

“Who are the guys you're with?”

“They're Talia's.”

“And the next step?”

“We haul ass to Louisiana, Nyssa provides us with a plane, and we fly to Seattle.”

“Nyssa is in on this?”

“Yeah, believe it or not, your sisters want to keep you alive.”

Robin glances at Bane. He hasn't told her he has sisters. 

“I can get you out of here,” Barsad says. 

Then Bane says the magic words, the words Robin wasn't even aware she was holding her breath to hear. “You get us both out.”

Barsad nods. “Yeah.” He throws Robin a glance. “I gotta head back. We'll be here Friday morning, be ready.”

“We will,” Bane says.

“Can I have my gun and knife back?”

There is a short moment of silence, then Bane gives him his weapons back. They turn off the lights and Barsad climbs out a back window. Robin pulls the curtains before turning on the lights again. The living room table has slid across the room when Bane and Barsad bumped into it during the fight.

It is quiet. There are no sounds from the other half of the house. The neighbors must have heard the scuffle, though. Robin looks at Bane and he looks as if he's thinking the same thing.

“You could give me a black eye,” she whispers.

He frowns. 

“They'll chalk up whatever they heard to us fighting, if they see that.” 

“No.” He shakes his head.

“We have to make it until Friday! If we're reported before that we're screwed!” she whispers. 

She can see the reluctance on his face. It's a good plan, though, he must know that. She walks up to him. 

She supposes it's a good thing how much he doesn't want to do it. The hesitance is clearly visible in his eyes when he looks at her.

“Make it look good,” she says. 

She tries to steel herself, but she hasn't been punched in the face since her days on the force. She's forgotten how much it hurts. It explodes through her head. She loses her balance, but manages not to fall over, and he hits her again. Then he catches her as she staggers backwards and pulls her to him. 

“I'm so sorry,” he says, his mouth against her hair. 

His chest is warm against her right cheek. She's bleeding from her lip, the taste of copper hot on her tongue. The left side of her face aches, the echoes of the blows burning through her skin and skull. 

“I'm alright,” she says.

Fuck, that hurt. He probably held back, but her head is already starting to feel like a melon. She thinks about fights that she got into as a teenager. There weren't that many, she was quick to get away, a fast runner, but she was also a very angry young girl. 

She finds it hard to fall asleep that night, not only because her head is pounding. Bane lies with his arm around her and she can't tell if it's because he wants to appease his guilt or if he can sense her restlessness. His body is warm next to hers, the big spoon to her little one. 

“What are your sisters like?” she asks. 

She can't really picture it. Female versions of him? What are the family dinners like, with Ra's al-Ghul at the head of the table?

“They're very capable,” he says. “Strong, but sweet too.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Mm.”

It feels strange to hear that admission of human emotion, even though he's already shown more than that, kissing her, lying between her thighs, holding her. She knows perfectly well that he is a human being. But that's here, in this bubble. She feels scared. In a few days' time he won't need her. 

The next morning her face is black and blue. She waits until she hears the neighbor's open their door and then she heads out at the same time, making sure they see her. At work her co-worker, Cali, throws her a sideways glance.

“Not quite such a catch then, huh?” she says.

“I tripped and fell,” Robin says and the shame she is supposed to fake feels very real, even though she knows she asked him to do it. 

She still has to lie, see-through though it may be. Battery is illegal. She's heard about men who've been dragged to the people's court, usually by the wife's family, and been sentenced for it. No one here knows her well enough to be bothered to do that, though. 

Knowing that they only have to make it until Friday somehow makes everything seem risky. Their very existence here even more perilous, the threat of being reported, of being found out. Robin has a hard knot of worry in her stomach and doesn't even realize until she sees the red spots in the toilet that it's, partly, menstrual cramps.

Relief washes over her like a tidal wave. She's not pregnant. Thank God. Her hands shake slightly as she gets a sanitary pad from the cupboard. 

Bane is in the kitchen when she comes out of the bathroom. He's making dinner. Robin stops by the table, puts a hand on the back of one of the chairs.

“Um... I'm not pregnant,” she says. 

She realizes too late that maybe she should have kept that to herself. She has no idea of what will happen tomorrow. 

He looks at her. He nods a little. 

“Just thought you should know,” she says. 

It feels outlandish, having this conversation.

“Were you worried?” he asks.

She doesn't know the right answer to that question. 

“A little,” she says. “You know...”

He looks at her and she looks back. 

“Were you worried?” she asks.

“A little.” 

It's difficult to eat anything that evening, and then she can't fall asleep. She's getting arrested tomorrow. 

She's awake through most of the night and then they get up early and get dressed. 

“No one will hurt you,” Bane says. “Just do exactly as you're told.”

She nods, but she feels stiff and her throat is dry. 

There's no warning. They barge through the door, weapons drawn and yell at them to get down on their knees, hands behind their heads. She recognizes Barsad, in uniform now, but there is no sign of recognition on his face. 

Her heart is beating wildly in her chest. She's kneeling next to Bane as they are handcuffed, out of the corner of her eye she can see his knees and his thighs, then someone pulls her to her feet and she is marched outside to a waiting car. A curtain stirs in one of the windows in the house across the street. 

They walk Bane to a different car and she can't help but to turn her head, trying to catch his eye, but then he's inside the car and she can't see him. An officer gets in behind the wheel, another on the passenger side. She falls to the side when they make a U-turn and head back up the street, but manages to push herself up to a sitting position again. 

They drive out of town. The cuffs are digging into her wrists and cold sweat soaks her shirt. She can't really see into the car in front of them, where Bane is. What if this is real, she thinks. 

Outside the car there is thick greenery on both sides. One of the officers catches her eye in the rear-view mirror. 

“Lady, the key to the cuffs are behind the seat,” he says. “If you can manage to uncuff yourself without it being noticeable to those in the car behind us, you can do so.”

It takes her a few seconds to process what he's said. 

“Okay,” she says. 

She digs her fingers in between the seat and the backrest, careful not to squirm too much, but she can't find the key. It makes her panic, as if her freedom depends on her being able to uncuff herself. She takes a few deep breaths. It doesn't matter, she thinks, their instructions are to free her, not to kill her. 

They drive for what seems like a long time. No one says anything. Her arms are cramping and her fingers have gone numb. It's still nothing but trees on both sides of the road when the car up ahead slows down, then comes to a stop. They pull up behind it. Robin watches the door on the driver's side open and Barsad steps out. He looks annoyed. 

The driver of this car rolls down the window.

“Fucking engine trouble,” she hears Barsad say, before he continues to the car behind them. 

She turns around as best she can, and because she does, she sees him pull out a gun and shoot the people in the car that has pulled up behind them. She jumps. Two shots, banging loudly against her eardrums. 

That is the cue for movement. The officers who are in the car with her step out and the driver opens the door to the backseat and helps her out. He leans in and fishes the keys out from behind the seat, where they were although she couldn't find them, and unlocks her cuffs just as Bane comes up to her. 

“Are you alright?” he asks.

She nods. She rubs her wrists. She can see the driver in the third car, a hole right in the middle of his forehead, leaking red, and she stares because she recognizes him. She's seen him in the municipal building and she even knows his name, heard it at some point and remembered it because it's the same as hers. Robin. 

“We need to get to Louisiana as soon as fucking possible,” Barsad says. 

Bane nods. Robin doesn't want to go by herself in the second car again, and she opens her mouth to say so, but she doesn't have to. Bane puts his hand on her back and steers her towards the first car. He climbs into the backseat after her. 

“Keep this on you,” he says as Barsad pulls back out onto the road, and hands her an ID-card. “In case we're stopped.”

The woman in the photograph on the ID isn't Robin, but she has dark hair and brown eyes, and a military rank. 

She feels strangely detached from it all, especially from the dead bodies in the car they left behind. The two officers who were sent to, what? Escort them? As additional back-up? They worked for the League of Shadows and Barsad shot them, just like that.

Robin can see the back of his head. The man in the passenger seat in the front has a map on his lap. It feels unreal that she is leaving the detested Florida behind, but it doesn't feel as good as she thought it would. 

They are stopped at the border to the next zone, and Robin's heart is in her throat, but as soon as the officer has glanced at Barsad's ID he just waves them through. It's shortly after that she feels the wetness between her legs, a saturated, squishy dampness. She looks and she can see a dark spot on the seat of her pants. Fuck.

There are no female officers in the rescue party, no one she can ask if she has a sanitary pad or a tampon, and the only one she can alert to her problem is Bane. 

She nudges his arm. 

“I've bled through,” she says, keeping her voice down, although that's just silly since they're in the compartment of a car. 

He looks at her, then glances down at her lap. 

“Are there any field packages in the car?” he says.

“Yeah, in the back,” Barsad replies.

Bane turns around and reaches over the backrest into the trunk. After a moment of rummaging he hands her a bag. It contains a couple of sanitary pads and a couple of wet-wipes. Robin holds it for a few seconds.

“Aren't we going to pull over?” she says then.

“Where?” Bane replies. 

He's right. They're on the freeway, big trucks and other cars all around. She doesn't have much choice. It's either continue to bleed through her pants, or change the pad in the car. 

She supposes this must be what it's like for women who are in the army. And maybe men who are in the army are jaded, and not as squeamish about women's periods as other men can sometimes be. 

So she does it, although it takes a bit of wriggling, and as far as she can tell they have the decency to look away. At least the man sitting next to her has already seen her naked, so perhaps she should be grateful for that.

She uses the bag for the trash, and puts the extra pads and wet-wipes in her pocket. There's nothing she can do about the stains on her underwear and pants right now, at least her pants are dark so it's not too visible. Bane puts his hand on her knee then, petting her leg. 

“Try to get some sleep,” he says. 

She doesn't think she'll be able to sleep, but it's a long drive. She dozes off, if only for a moment. They stop for a bathroom break, in the middle of the woods so there are no actual bathrooms. They switch driver and they eat prepacked military provisions. 

Robin has the horrible feeling of being in free fall. 

They arrive at an airfield in Louisiana that evening. The cars drive straight into a big hangar where a plane is waiting. Four men in cargo wear stand in front of it, as well as a woman wearing a gray suit. 

Robin gets out of the car when the others do. The woman gives Bane a hug. 

“I didn't think you'd be here,” he says then.

“I had to see you,” she replies.

Robin thinks that the unspoken words might be 'in case I never will again'. She thinks the woman must be his sister, Nyssa. 

Her hair is cut in a short style and she is slim, but not skinny. She glances at Robin for a second, but doesn't say anything. She turns her gaze back to Bane again.

“You need to move,” she says. “Be safe.”

Robin thinks about how Bane described his sisters as 'sweet'. There is nothing sweet about this woman. 

“Thank you,” Bane says. 

Nyssa nods.

They get on the plane, everyone from the two cars, and as soon as they are up in the air Robin goes to the bathroom. She splashes cold water on her face. She wants to shake this feeling that she's somehow dreaming, and yet everything stands out in such sharp colors, overly real. She looks at herself in the mirror. The left side of her face is purple, her cheekbone swollen. She left Gotham with him, left her whole life behind, and after everything she cracks now? It doesn't make any sense. 

She grips the edge of the sink and tries not to cry. After a while she goes back out to the cabin. She can't stay in the bathroom forever. It's a small plane, but there are more seats than there are passengers. It's quiet, someone is looking out the window at the darkness, someone else is reading a newspaper. She sits down next to Bane. 

The cold, clammy tentacles that have wrapped themselves around her chest won't let go. She wants to go home, back to before all this happened. She wants to turn back time, and in her mind it's like flipping backwards through a book. Only that isn't possible. 

Bane looks at her. 

“Everything okay?” he says.

She doesn't know what to reply. She turns to him and leans the good side of her face against his chest and wraps her arm around his waist. He puts his arm around her shoulders. Through the small round window she can see the black sky, like a big nothing. She can hear his heartbeats and feel the slow rise and fall of his chest with each breath. It is strange to think that the most familiar thing right now is the warmth and smell of him.


	9. Chapter 9

Robin sleeps for a couple of hours. Bane is still holding her when she wakes up; his arm feels heavy and she thinks he's sleeping. It's still dark outside the window. She's starting to get a crick in her neck, and she needs to pee, so she lifts Bane's arm off her shoulders. Of course he wakes up.

“Be right back,” she says.

He leans his head against the backrest again and seems to go right back to sleep. Robin visits the bathroom, then she asks Barsad, who is awake, if there is any water and something to eat. He hands her a bottle and more military provisions and she goes back to her seat next to Bane. 

It's quiet. The stillness of night permeates the cabin, even though they are far above any human settlement. She eats and drinks some water. For a moment she manages to feel as if she's by herself, alone with her thoughts. 

They touch ground on an empty airfield, much like the one in Louisiana, in the middle of the night. It's colder here and an icy wind seeps through Robin's clothes as soon as she steps off the plane. Despite everything the chilliness feels good. It's something familiar.

She's never been in Seattle before, but through the windows of the car it looks much like any other city at night. The streets are deserted, save from a few other patrol cars – it's well past curfew – and most windows in the buildings they pass are dark. 

**

Barsad pulls up outside the radio factory.

“See you tomorrow,” he says and Bane nods before stepping out of the car. 

His girlfriend follows him. She seems clever. No doubt Bane gave her those bruises, after Barsad's visit to their little house, so she's a tough one. Barsad can't help but to wonder where Bane met her, but he won't say. Not that Barsad has flat-out asked. He hinted that he was curious, and Bane circumvented the subject. Fair enough. 

As soon as Bane and Robin are through the door, Barsad drives off. He drives down to the docks and parks the car by a shipping yard that looks dark and deserted at this hour. Should another patrol car come by they won't think it strange that he's parked here, though. A stone's throw away is a brothel, and military personnel get a discount. 

Barsad heads in that direction, but turns down another alley between two squat buildings. There is a payphone by the door to the manager's office. He digs through his pockets and puts a small stack of coins on top of the phone. He calls his men, well, Talia's men, and gets an update. Then he places the last call to Talia herself.

“Hello?” she says when she picks up the phone.

She has a pleasant voice. 

“Package dropped off, nice and clean.”

The dead officers down in Florida is a blotch, but according to the intel he just received, they haven't connected it to her. They are looking for rebels, thinking they are behind it, and are yet unaware who the people that were lifted really are. Anyway, Bane will give her the details when he gets there, the important thing right now is that no one has been able to track them.

“I have to go, someone's at the door,” Talia says. 

Bane and his girl. 

“Alright,” Barsad says and hangs up.

He slept with her, some years back. They screwed six ways from Sunday, and the sex was fantastic, but then it was out of their system, so to speak. He's aware it's considered bad form to screw your best friend's sister, but they're adults. He's pretty sure Bane knows about it, Talia might even have told him, but even if he does he hasn't said a word about it. 

Barsad goes back to the car and drives towards the hotel where he's been staying. If Bane leaves the country Barsad needs to think about his own choices. Maybe he might be able to stay here, under a false name of course. He wouldn't mind working for Talia, if she'd want him to, but it wouldn't be the same. 

He was twenty-two when he met Bane the first time. It was a weapons deal, abroad, and Barsad didn't know who Bane was, only that he was to meet up with the sellers and his contact would be among them, having infiltrated the business prior to the whole thing. 

In the group of sellers was this young, incredibly beautiful guy, eyes and lips that could make girls swoon, and Barsad didn't think for a second that that was the guy. But they did the deal and as soon as it was done, pretty boy pulled out his gun and shot the others in the group. People he'd been working with for a good stretch of time. No loose ends were the instructions. That was Bane, eighteen or nineteen years old at the time.

Barsad goes up the stairs to his room and tosses the keys onto the bedside table. The paint on the walls is peeling and it smells of cigarette smoke. His thoughts go briefly to his mother, living upstate a little north of Gotham. Fuck. He picks up the keys again, then heads downstairs, past the reception and down to the basement. 

He chose this place for a reason. The illegal bar in the basement is small, dark and smells of stale beer. He grabs a seat, one where he can see all the exits, and buys himself a whiskey. It doesn't take long before a woman comes up to him. She's a fellow officer. He can tell, despite her civilian clothes. 

“Hi,” she says. “Buy me a drink?”

He does and a while later they're in his room, in his bed. After they're done and he's tied a knot on the condom and thrown it on the floor, she lights a cigarette. 

“That was great,” she says. 

“Yeah,” he says. It was. 

When she's finished her cigarette she gets up. He watches her get dressed. 

“Maybe we can do it again sometime?” she says and leans down and kisses him. She slides her hand down his stomach and gives his, now soft, dick a squeeze.

“Maybe,” he says. 

She smiles and he smiles a little back at her, then she leaves. 

He won't be here long enough for there to be a next time. It's over. Unless Bane somehow manages to work things out with the old man, Barsad has to make it across the border. Back east there's a whole bunch of people who knows what he looks like and that he was Bane's second in command. Down in Florida are officers who thinks he's a rebel and are pissed that he shot two of their guys. 

He stares out the window. It's the harsh truth and he has no choice but to face it. Although, what he'd want, more than anything else, is to put a pullet clean through Daggett's eye. 

**

They pull up outside an industrial building. The sign above the door says it's a radio factory. 

“See you tomorrow,” Barsad, who is behind the wheel, says. 

Bane nods. He and Robin get out of the car. He unlocks the door to the factory and they slip inside. It's almost too dark to see, the only light coming from the streetlights outside, sifted through dirty windows placed just below the ceiling. 

They are on a landing and Bane starts down the stairs. Robin follows but misses a step and she gasps when she loses her balance, but her foot lands on the step below and she grabs the railing.

“Shit!” she hisses. 

Her pulse ticks quickly. Did someone hear that? But there's no one here. She feels foolish all the same. Bane takes her hand and she wants to pull away, she's capable of walking down a flight of stairs, but she doesn't.

When they reach the floor they walk past work stations and the dark silhouettes of silent machines. Bane unlocks another door and behind it is another flight of stairs, which they follow down to the basement. Bane has a flashlight, but outside the cone of light it is pitch black. 

Another door and then they are in a labyrinth of tunnels. Robin follows his broad back, his bow-legged gait. 

“Do we have to be quiet?” she whispers.

“No.” He glances back at her over his shoulder. “Is there something you want to say?”

“Not really. Can I have the flashlight?”

She's not scared of the dark, she never has been, but underground tunnels are a bit creepy and there's no reason why he has to man the flashlight. He hands it to her and she thinks she sees a hint of a smile. 

“I assume you know the way?” she says.

Every corridor looks exactly the same. 

“Yes.”

Finally they emerge into another basement. There are boxes stacked along the walls, some of them open to reveal such mundane things as stuffed toys and lampshades. 

They're in an ordinary residential block. It is obvious as soon as they get out of the basement. It's an older building, the floor in the stairwell is black-and-white checkered and the staircase leading up to the upper floors is ornate. There's an elevator too, but Bane starts up the stairs. 

Robin's legs feel heavy; despite the sleep she caught on the flight, she is tired. She wonders what this sister, Talia, is like. 

She doesn't get a good look at her right away, because as soon as they step over the threshold she hugs Bane, long and tight, and he hugs her back. 

They're in the hall of an apartment. There is a coat-rack and a mirror, below it is a small table and a few sets of keys are in a bowl on the tabletop. 

“Thank God you're alive,” Talia says and then she lets go of Bane. She turns to Robin, smiling a little. “Hi, I'm Talia.”

She holds out her hand and Robin shakes it. 

“Robin.”

“I'm pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

She is extraordinarily beautiful. She has a pretty face and curves in all the right places, as the phrase goes. 

“No one knows you're here,” she says. “I just got the all-clear from Barsad. You're safe.”

“There are two dead officers down in Florida,” Bane says. “They're bound to have been found by now.”

Talia nods. “I know. I doubt they'll be able to track it back here. Thanks to Nyssa providing us with a plane.”

Bane nods too. 

“We have a lot to talk about,” Talia says.

She offers them to freshen up first and generously lends Robin a clean set of clothes. Bane apparently has some spare articles of clothing here. 

“Do you have any sanitary pads or tampons?” Robin asks.

“Yes, in the bathroom cabinet,” Talia replies.

Robin goes into the bathroom first. It is small, old, but nice – the tiles are blue and white, the towel hooks are in the shape of swans. She feels grimy and it's a relief to peel off her dirty clothes. She's lost track of time, fleeing across the country. It feels like a long time, even though it isn't.

She finds a box of sanitary pads in the cabinet and she quickly gets dressed. The clothes don't fit her very well, the bra is much too big and the pants slide down on her hips. The clothes smell of stranger, but they're clean. 

Bane is outside when she opens the door. 

“What do I do with these?” Robin asks, holding her dirty clothes. 

“Put them in the hamper.”

There is a weaved basket by the wall in the bathroom.

“Won't your sister mind?”

“No.”

It feels wrong, but Robin lifts the lid to the hamper. At the top of the pile of clothes inside are a pair of dark cargo-pants. A shiver goes down her spine. 

Of course. Of course his sister is League of Shadows, but Robin realizes then that she has to be the leader of this zone. It makes sense and Robin should have figured it out earlier. Bane told her that he could trust the leader of the Seattle zone, and the leader of the Seattle zone is a woman; Miranda Tate, Robin has heard of her, but she supposes that is an alias, just like the name 'Bane'. His sister really is a female version of him. 

Robin hesitates in the hall for a moment. She feels very much like a guest, an intruder, especially in her borrowed clothes, but she follows the smell of toast to the kitchen. The cupboards are painted a deep blue color and there are fresh herbs in pots on the windowsill. On the wall is a shelf with a row of teacups, all of them different. Talia follows her gaze to them.

“I am very fond of tea,” she says and smiles.

Robin smiles back.

“Thank you for lending me your clothes,” she says. “Even if I don't carry them off quite like I imagine you do.”

Talia looks at her, still smiling. 

“You're just his type.”

If that isn't awkward to hear, Robin doesn't know what is.

“Oh,” Talia says then, “I'm such an idiot. I didn't mean for it to sound like that, as if there's been like a long line of girlfriends... And I'm making this worse. I'm sorry, please forgive me.”

“That's alright.”

“What I meant was, I understand what my brother sees in you, and even if we don't know each other yet, I feel almost as if we do.”

Robin does not feel that way at all. And it makes her uneasy to think about what Bane might have said about her. The word 'girlfriend', especially, sets off a string of alarms in her head. She is saved from having to continue the conversation by Bane, who shows up just then. He's a fast showerer. 

Talia puts a teapot on the table. 

“I made tea,” she says.

“No thanks. How fast can you get us out of the country?” Bane says. 

Talia looks at him for a second.

“A week, a week and a half,” she says. “But I think you should talk to Dad first. Before you decide anything...”

“I did talk to him. I called, or Robin did.”

Talia turns her gaze to Robin for a second.

“I know,” she says then.

“You know?”

“Yes, he told me, eventually. And I told him that I'd never forgive him. But I still think you should talk. I just can't believe that he'd want this.”

Robin looks up at Bane. His expression is difficult to read. 

“Have you told him that I'm here?” he says.

“No.” Talia sighs. “He's been odd, when I've spoken to him.”

“Odd how?” 

“I can't explain, but all of this... It doesn't make sense.”

Bane doesn't say anything and it's quiet for a moment. 

“Maybe you want some tea and toast?” Talia says then, looking at Robin. 

Robin does want tea and toast, she's hungry.

“Yes, thank you.”

Tea and toast in the middle of the night used to mean you'd been out and had some fun, or you stayed up late talking. The memories feel so close, they float on the steam that drifts up from her cup and they melt with the butter on her tongue. For a moment they threaten to choke her. 

But she manages to swallow them back down, and when they've finished eating she manages to follow Bane to the guest bedroom. 

She doesn't have a nightgown so she strips down to her panties and gets in under the cover. The sheets feel cold and they smell unfamiliar. 

“You're very quiet,” Bane says after a moment and she feels his hand on her hair. 

“I'm just tired.”

She turns towards him and kisses him goodnight. A week, a week and a half.


	10. Chapter 10

For a split second, when she wakes up, she doesn't know where she is. She might be in any of the number of foster homes she's been in, or in a dormitory at the orphanage. She might be in her own bed in her old apartment, or she might be in Bruce's. Perhaps it's a testimony to the rootlessness that seems to run like a thread throughout her life that she isn't bewildered or alarmed. Or maybe it's just that transient moment between being asleep and being awake, and how you can sometimes feel safe there.

She remembers soon enough. Seattle, Bane's sister. She's alone in bed and daylight falls in through the window. The wallpaper is ornate, but faded. 

She gets up and pulls on the clothes Talia gave her yesterday, then she goes to the bathroom. Her hair is a mess and she uses a hairbrush that she finds in the bathroom cabinet to brush it. She supposes it is Talia's hairbrush, but she probably won't mind, considering she feels as if she already knows her. What the hell did she mean by that anyway? 

The apartment is quiet and for a moment she thinks she might be alone there, but she finds Bane in the living room. He's sitting on the couch, reading. He's shaved and for a short second she stares. She'd forgotten that was how he looked when she first met him. In a way he looks younger clean shaven, but at the same time the beard made him look softer somehow, kinder in a way. 

“Did you sleep well?” he asks.

She nods. “What time is it?”

“Noon.”

She can't believe she slept this late. 

“You could have woken me.”

“You needed the sleep.”

“And you didn't?”

He smiles a little and gets up from his seat. 

“Where's Talia?” she asks.

“She had business to attend to. Do you want breakfast?”

He's standing right in front of her, so she touches his cheek, it's smooth under her fingers, and smiles a little. She'd actually forgotten how full his lips are, since they've been partly hidden by his facial hair.

He leans down and kisses her. It feels different, his mouth feels different. 

“That's a little weird,” she says.

“What, without the beard?”

“Yeah. I think you should grow it back.”

“No, I don't like having a beard.”

“Why not?”

“I just don't.” 

She follows him into the kitchen and he makes her breakfast. She looks out the window. The building across the street is gray and rain-soaked. He sits down at the table with her, although he's already eaten. 

“I'm going to see my father,” he says after a moment. 

Robin pauses. 

“I've spoken to him and he's willing to meet.”

She slept too long. 

“I thought we were leaving the country,” she says. 

“We still might have to. But I'm going to talk to him.”

Never before in her life did she seriously consider leaving the country, despite the state of things. Not only because she didn't have the means, but because she felt there was nothing for her there. Now she feels that there is. The chance to get away from him, from all of it. 

She tries to think. What would he say if she said 'Alright, but get me a passport and some money first, and good luck with your dad'?

There is no possible combination of words, no correct order in which to say them that would magically make them sound like anything other than what they are. She might as well say 'I played you'. She has to wait. Until she is safely out of the country, she has to stay with him.

“Okay,” she says.

“I know that I promised I would make it up to you. That I would ensure you were repaid for your loyalty and your bravery. But I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that. I might not be able to offer you anything at all in return for what you've done for me.”

He looks at her. She remembers the conversation, they were sitting at the dinner table in her apartment, and he said her loyalty would not go unnoticed. She looks back at him and she's not sure what it is he wants from her, exactly. Forgiveness, maybe. 

“You didn't know then what would happen,” she says. 

“No.”

He's still looking at her and because she doesn't know what else to say she scoots forward on her chair and puts her arms around him. She leans her chin on his shoulder and hugs him. He hugs her back. They sit like that for a little while. She can feel his head against hers and she can feel him breathing. 

“Oh, I'm sorry.” 

They let go of each other. Talia is standing in the doorway. Robin didn't hear her come in. She feels mildly embarrassed, caught in the act, even though it was only a hug. 

“I'll give you a moment,” Talia says.

“No, come in,” Robin says. 

“I got you some clothes,” Talia says and puts a paper bag on the table. “Of course you are welcome to anything of mine, but I thought you'd feel more comfortable having something your own size. Assuming I managed to guess it right.”

“Thank you.”

“I got you some things as well,” Talia says to Bane. She sits down and shrugs off her coat. “I can only stay for a few minutes.” 

Barsad shows up a little later, shortly after Talia has left again. He's brought papers, not yet fully prepared ID-cards, and he and Bane finish them. This time Robin's name is Olivia Duvall and she is a fairly high-ranking officer. Bane puts in her photograph, lifted from Linda's and originally from her own, non-fake, ID-card. Robin watches. She figures it might be a good thing to learn how to do this. 

“I'll hang around here,” Barsad says. “Unless you want me to come with you?”

Bane shakes his head.

“I'll let you know how things go,” he says. “Do you have an exit route prepared, for leaving the country?”

“Yeah. But if it comes to that, I have to go and see my mother first.”

“That wouldn't be wise. If Daggett is looking for you, he's bound to have her place under surveillance.”

“I'm not sure he's bothered with that, not after all this time. He probably thinks I've left the country already. And I have to.”

Bane nods a little. 

“Rendezvous in Toronto then?” he says. 

“Yeah.”

That evening, when they're alone in the guest bedroom, Bane takes off the wedding ring and gives it to Robin. She takes hers off too. It is both strange and sad that the two rings in the palm of her hand are the only things she has that are really hers. Not losing them suddenly feels imperative and she doesn't know where to put them. She tries to put the smaller one on her right hand. It's a tighter fit, but it works. She puts the other one in the purse Talia has given her. That will have to do.

Bane is watching her.

“I'm afraid of losing them,” she says, truthfully. 

He nods a little. 

“We owe your grandparents our thanks,” he says. 

“Yeah. I didn't actually know them.”

She gets undressed and gets into bed. Uneasiness writhes and turns in her stomach. Tomorrow she is meeting Ra's al-Ghul, and she really doesn't want to. 

“I was thinking about something,” she says when Bane gets into bed too. “I don't actually know what to call you. I know your real name, but Barsad calls you Bane, so... what do you want to be called?”

He looks back at her. 

“You don't know my real name,” he says.

“Yeah, I do. I looked at your ID when you were unconscious at my place.”

She makes an apologetic face, but he just pulls her hair behind her ear, apparently not upset about this piece of information.

“That's not my real name,” he says. “Not entirely. Call me Dorrance, that's my first name.”

“Then what's your last name?”

“al-Ghul.”

“But what about Antonio?”

“An alias.”

“Do you ever wake up in the morning and don't remember your name?”

She meant it as a joke, but he doesn't smile. “No,” he says.

“I was only joking.”

He smiles then, but she has a sense he only does so to please her. 

“What's Talia's alias?” she asks, thinking that she probably has one too, on top of the name Miranda Tate that she uses for the public.

She asks him just to see what he replies, if he will tell her, but he doesn't fall for it.

“Why do you want to know?” he says. 

“I'm just curious. I've only ever been just Robin, my entire life, so all this cloak and dagger stuff just feels odd.”

“Our dad didn't want us to have any advantages, simply because of our last name, and it would also have been a risk if the wrong people knew. Especially when we were younger.”

Robin had never heard of the League of Shadows before they took control of the army, and then the country. But an organization like that didn't spring into existence over night, and she supposes that they must have had enemies. 

“Do you ever wish you could have been just Dorrance?” she asks. She genuinely wants to know.

“No. Now, go to sleep, we have to get up early tomorrow.”

**

It's a mountain town, picturesque like a postcard. Robin knows now why Bane was picky about where they should cross the Rocky Mountains, before they ended up in Florida; his dad lives here. He is quiet as he drives and Robin looks out at the scenery, the snow covered mountain tops visible above the rooftops. 

They stop outside a house at the far edge of town and Bane kills the engine. It's an ordinary house surrounded by a neat garden. It's by no means small, but it's not a mansion. 

“Are you sure he's home?” Robin says. It looks peaceful, no signs of life.

“He will have been alerted to our arrival.”

Maybe by the people at the airport, where the plane they took from Seattle landed. Or maybe by any one of the people they have passed since then. Maybe everyone here is League of Shadows. 

They get out of the car. The air smells fresh, free from big city exhaust fumes and industrial smoke. 

Robin expected a military compound, perhaps an underground bunker, bare concrete walls and an official looking conference room. This is anything but. Bane opens the front door as if he lives here, which surprises her a bit considering the circumstances, and they enter the hall to a perfectly ordinary home. A staircase leads up to the second floor, a pair of glass doors are open to the right and through them is a living room. To the left is a dining room and Robin guesses that the doorway she can see in there leads to a kitchen facing the back of the house. 

To say that she feels nervous would be an understatement. She thinks it's a mistake to be here. 

The man who comes down the stairs is in his early seventies, dressed in dark pants and a dark jacket. His hair is thinning, but he was most likely very handsome in his youth. Perhaps he still is, at least to the right demographic group, but who knows, powerful men have a tendency to attract women a lot younger than themselves. He's tall, but other than that he and Bane don't look at all alike. 

“Dorrance,” he says, as a way of greeting. His voice is sonorous.

“Hi.”

Robin wishes she was anywhere but here.

“This is Robin,” Bane says. “Robin, this is my dad.”

Ra's al-Ghul turns his gaze to her. 

“A pleasure to meet you,” he says and it's impossible to determine whether he means it or not. “There's lunch in the kitchen.”

He turns his gaze to Bane again. 

“I didn't come here to have lunch,” Bane says. 

“But you brought your girlfriend. So let's sit down as civilized people and eat.”

Robin can tell Bane doesn't want to. And she understands him perfectly. They sit down at the table in the kitchen, it's a light, spacious room, and the atmosphere is strained to say the least. 

“What do you do, Robin?” Ra's al-Ghul asks. “Are you military?”

“No, sir. I'm a cleaner.”

He nods a little and there is actually nothing judgmental or condescending in the look on his face. 

“What did you think of the town, as you drove here?” he says. “It nearly hasn't changed, in over a hundred years. Modern conveniences, of course, and there are a few newer buildings.”

“It looks nice.”

Robin picks at her food. 

“Enough of this,” Bane says. 

“What do you expect?” Ra's al-Ghul says. “You bring a civilian here. You tell her my name, she now knows my face.”

Robin goes cold inside and looks at Bane. 

“She saved my life,” he says.

“For which I am eternally grateful, of course.”

“Are you?”

Robin looks from Bane, to his dad. 

“Yes,” Ra's al-Ghul says. 

“But you wanted me hunted,” Bane says.

Robin can't understand how he manages to keep almost all emotion out of his voice.

“Daggett had built a solid case against you,” Ra's al-Ghul says.

“Daggett only serves his self-interests, we serve true justice. You knew I had been set up. You've become a politician!”

“And you are a brute!” 

Robin jumps at the sudden outburst. 

“I do not have to explain my actions to you!” Ra's says. 

Bane just stares at him. 

Ra's gets up from his seat and angrily throws his napkin on the table before he leaves the room. 

It goes quiet, except for the soft tick from the clock on the wall. Robin has no idea of what to say. She glances at Bane and he looks back. 

“You want to finish eating?” he says after a few seconds.

“No, I'm not hungry.”

They clear the table. Then they do the washing up, which feels outlandish. She's putting Ra's al-Ghul's plates and glasses into cupboards. She keeps throwing glances at Bane but he doesn't return them. 

They go into the living room. There is no sign of Ra's and Robin assumes he's gone back upstairs, but she feels jumpy. Also, she doesn't know how to broach the subject with Bane that his dad is a lunatic and they should get out of here. 

There's an open fireplace and on the mantelpiece are a couple of framed photographs. She recognizes Bane and his sisters, they look to be in their early teens, and she recognizes Ra's al-Ghul too, younger and smiling. 

“There's no picture of your mom?” she says.

“She's dead.”

“I'm sorry. But why is there no photo of her?”

He doesn't reply. Maybe he is about to, but he's interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the lock on the front door. He takes a step forward, just one, and his posture doesn't change, but that one step puts him between her and the doorway. 

The man who enters is slim, in his late twenties by the look of it and has fair hair. For a second he just gapes at them, his eyes fixed at Bane. 

“I just came to drop off some papers... um...” His gaze flickers to the staircase. “I'm sorry, I didn't know you were here.”

Bane is a lot faster than he looks. In the blink of an eye he has grabbed the other man, kicked the door shut and pinned him against it. 

“Who are you?” he says and he sounds surprisingly calm.

“Raymond. I'm Ra's assistant.”

Bane frowns at that. “Ra's doesn't have an assistant.”

The other man looks frightened and Robin almost feels bad for him. 

“Put him down.” Ra's voice comes from the top of the stairs. 

Bane keeps staring at the man and doesn't ease his grip. Robin stands frozen to the spot, watching the scene as if she has no part in it. Ra's walks down the stairs. 

“He's telling the truth,” he says. “He is my assistant.”

Bane glances at him. Finally he lets go, but Robin feels as if she's still holding her breath. 

“Did you have some papers for me?” Ra's says.

Raymond looks flustered. “Yes, um...” He clears his throat and picks up his bag, which has fallen to the floor. He should have held on to it, Robin thinks.

He hands Ra's a thick stack of papers. She can't see from here what it is, just that they're typewritten.

“Thank you,” Ra's says. “You may go, I expect this will take some time.”

“Dad...” Bane says. 

“We'll clear up our business later,” Ra's says and pats Bane's shoulder. He sounds self-assured, but his expression tells a different story. He turns his gaze away. “I have to attend to this.”

And with that he heads back upstairs. Robin doesn't have to know him to understand this is strange; she can tell from the look on Bane's face that this isn't how his dad usually behaves. It's not what she expected either, to be honest. 

Bane turns to Raymond then. 

“I can't let you leave.”

Uncertainty flickers across Raymond's face. “What?”

“I still don't know who you are.”

“It's like Ra's said...”

“Where are you headed now?”

“Back to headquarters.” 

“Precisely.”

Bane grabs him and turns him around, silencing him with one hand over his mouth, and forces him face down onto the floor. 

“Get some rope,” he says to Robin.

She doesn't move. 

“Robin.” Bane doesn't raise his voice, but he sounds impatient. “Get some rope, the cupboard under the sink. And something to gag him with.”

She does as he asks, then follows as he walks Raymond out the kitchen door and into the shed at the end of the garden. It smells of wood in there and the window is so dirty you can't see through it. The whole situation feels like something out of a book, too absurd to be real, but the man sitting on the floor, staring up at them, is horribly real.

Bane makes sure he's is tied up properly, then takes Robin's arm and leads her out of there. They stop just outside the kitchen door.

“What are you doing?” she says. 

“He can't go back to headquarters. He'll tell them we're here.”

“So you're gonna keep him in the garden shed?”

This is insane. Frustration makes her want to scream, or kick something, Bane's shin perhaps, and at the same time she's scared. She's his accomplice. They have kidnapped Ra's al-Ghul's assistant. 

“I'm going to talk to him,” Bane says.

“No, you need to talk to your dad! That's why we're here. You have to... fix this and instead you're making it worse!”

He looks at her. 

“Just go wait in the house.”

It feels as if she's talking to a brick wall. 

“I don't want to wait in the house.”

“Fine. Then wait here.”


	11. Chapter 11

Robin sits on the step outside the backdoor to Ra's al-Ghul's house. She doesn't want to go inside, because Ra's is in there and he's... well, he's Ra's al-Ghul. 

She stares at the garden shed. It's quiet. The air is chilly. She doesn't want to go down there, because she doesn't want to know what Bane is doing. 

Maybe she should just run. Except she doesn't have anything but the striped sweater and blue jeans she's wearing, that Talia bought her, and a fake military ID. She doesn't have any money, she would get caught long before she managed to get out of the country.

She is much more afraid of everyone else than she is of Bane, maybe because she's been able to manipulate him to a degree. Or has she? She thinks about it. If he's really in love with her, isn't it much more likely that he already was, and all she did was to show him that she was open to his advances? 

She has him convinced she feels the same way about him, though, and it has to stay that way. It's her best shot, her only shot, at getting out of this. She hardly even knows what 'this' is anymore. It's staggering how much she's in over her head.

They should never have come here. It was a mistake. She wonders if Bane thinks so too. 

She chews on a nail, thinking. 

Finally Bane emerges from the shed. Alone. She gets up on her feet.

“What did you do?” she asks, even though she's not sure she wants to hear the answer.

“I talked to him.”

“And?”

Bane doesn't reply. 

“What did he say?” 

There is another brief pause, then Bane says “He said that my father hasn't been to the headquarters for months, he has run everything from here.”

“Okay.” 

“Something's not right.”

Really? He just figured that out?

“Assuming what Raymond says is true, and...” He breaks off. “My father might be unwell.”

Robin thinks cancer. Then a light goes on in her head. 

“He's going senile?” she says.

Bane meets her gaze.

“Shit,” she says. 

A dictator is bad. A senile one is bound to be worse. 

“Maybe we should go?” she says. She phrases it as a question, but if it was up to her, that's what they would do. Head for Canada. 

“I can't.” 

“Look, I'm sorry, but... Leaving the country, that was our plan.”

“The plan has changed.”

“No!”

The powerlessness grates inside her like nails against a blackboard.

“I have things I need to do,” Bane says and reaches for the door.

“I swear to God, if you go in there now, I will scream.”

He looks at her. “Do that.”

He yanks the door open and goes inside. He called her bluff, just like that. As much as she wants to scream, he knows she won't, because no one would help her. Fuck him for using that against her.

She doesn't know what to do now, but then she heads inside too. It is quiet. She goes into the dining room. There is a teaspoon under one of the chairs, gleaming in the faint light falling in through the window. 

She's still standing there when Ra's comes into the room. He stops in his tracks.

Robin opens her mouth to speak, but he is fast, unexpectedly so for a man his age. There is an ornate urn on a side table, and the next she knows he's pulled out a gun from it.

“Tell me who you are.”

Robin holds up her hands.

“Robin John-Blake. Please don't shoot!”

“Who do you work for?”

His eyes are cold. Her heart is beating so fast and hard she thinks it might crack her ribs. 

Then Bane is there.

“Dad, drop the gun.”

Ra's doesn't take his eyes off Robin. His hand is steady. 

“It's Robin, you met her earlier,” Bane says. “She's my girlfriend. Give me the gun.”

Ra's eyes flicker to Bane, who isn't moving, but holding out his hand, looking as if he's half-ready to grab the gun from him.

Finally Ra's lowers the gun. 

“Yes, of course,” he says after another second. “It's the bad light in here.” He looks at Robin. “I'm afraid I didn't recognize you.” 

The lie is transparent. She can see it on his face; he has no idea he's already met her, but he's trying to cover it up. 

“I can take that,” Bane says and holds out his hand.

“Yes,” Ra's says and hands Bane the gun. Ra's nods. “It's a good piece, you can have it if you want. If you would excuse me, I have work to do.”

After a polite nod to Robin he heads upstairs. 

Bane pops out the magazine and empties the chamber. 

“You alright?” he says.

“Yeah.”

Her pulse is slowly getting back to normal. She could have been killed by Ra's al-Ghul himself. Wouldn't that have been something to brag about, except the being dead part would have made it impossible.

“You see now why I can't leave?” Bane says. “He's commander-in-chief.”

Robin finds it annoying how he seems to be more interested in being right, or prove her wrong, rather than anything else. She looks at him. 

“As difficult as this is, maybe it at least explains why he didn't help you,” she says. “Back in Gotham, I mean.”

“No it doesn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's like he said, Daggett had a solid case against me. I had that man working for me, I let that happen.”

“But he's your dad...”

“It doesn't matter who we are.”

Robin looks at him. He says it matter-of-factly, but she doesn't believe him, she doesn't believe that it doesn't hurt. 

They search the house for weapons. There are a number of them, hidden in various places. Later they have dinner. Ra's is polite, treats Robin like a guest and talks about sports with Bane. He's steering clear of any volatile subjects, and so are they. 

He excuses himself after they have finished eating and Robin and Bane are left alone at the table. 

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“I've called Nyssa and Talia. They're on their way.”

“And the guy in the shed?”

“He'll stay there at least until tomorrow.”

It goes quiet. Bane stares at nothing, seemingly lost in thought. Robin hates the idea of apologizing to him, but she pissed him off before and she needs to stay on his good side.

“I'm sorry about before,” she says. 

He nods a little. “I know you're frightened,” he says then and looks at her. “It's going to be okay. I'm going to work this out.”

It's her turn to nod.

They go to bed early. The wallpaper in the bedroom is dark and the bed looks like an antique, with a heavy, wooden frame. But the sheets are clean, cool against her skin, and soft. Bane takes her hand and she falls asleep holding it. 

Talia arrives the next morning and Robin and Bane go outside to meet her on the driveway. The sun is shining from a clear blue sky and the air is crisp. 

“How bad is he?” Talia asks after they have said their hellos. Robin got a hug too this time. 

“You need to get a doctor to come down here, to examine him,” Bane says. 

“You haven't called the headquarters?”

“I can't.”

“Right. I forgot.” Talia sighs. “Shit.”

She puts her hands in the pockets of her coat. It's a thin wool coat, it's a warm, brown color and under it she's wearing black slacks and a white blouse. Her back is straight and she emanates a kind of natural self-assurance. She looks so good, Robin finds herself envious. She feels plain next to her. 

“We're heading to the other house,” Bane says. 

“In Lakeview?” Talia asks.

Bane nods. “We'll stay there. You can too, if you want.”

“Maybe.” Talia looks towards the house. “So, will he recognize me?” she says.

“Yes, I think so,” Bane says. “He forgot who Robin was, yesterday.”

“But he'd only met me for the first time earlier that day,” Robin says.

Talia looks up at the house. “I've talked to him on the phone. I should have known.” 

Bane looks at Robin. She's no expert though. She used to help out at bingo night at church, but her experience consists of things like Roberta shouting 'Bingo' after every single number, and Mr Hendricks wearing his clothes inside out. 

“Alright, I'm gonna go inside,” Talia says. “Will you come back here?”

She looks up at Bane. 

“Yeah, I'm just gonna drive Robin up to Lakeview.”

“Okay.” 

“Don't let Dad go into the garden shed.”

Talia gets a look of exasperation on her face. “Right.”

Robin and Bane get in the car. He drives with just one hand on the wheel. Robin looks out the window, at tall mountain tops and valleys covered in forest so thick it looks like a lush carpet. It's not a very long drive before they reach another small town. It isn't as pretty, the houses are more modern with less gingerbread work. The people's court, marked by a sign above the door that says just that, is in a church, or what used to be a church. Robin turns her head to look at it when they drive past it. That does not seem right to her.

“There's another church,” Bane says, as if he has read her mind. “That's the old one.”

He glances at her. 

“They have services on Sundays, I think,” he says. “If you want to go.”

“I'm not that religious.”

“I thought you were. You said, back in Gotham, that you go to church.”

“Yeah, but I knew people there. That's why I went, mostly. Are you religious?” 

“No. Organized religion is just a way to oppress people, and a breeding ground for corruption.”

Robin looks at him, then turns to the window again. She can't believe he has the nerve to talk about oppression. 

When the silence has stretched out for some time, Bane says “You said you weren't religious.” 

“No, but... Actually, I do believe in God, and I know for a fact that churches do a lot of good for a lot of people.”

Bane nods a little. 

“If you think religion is so bad, why didn't the League of Shadows just ban all churches, and all other religions too?” Robin says.

“I'm talking about my personal opinion,” Bane says. “There's spirituality in the philosophy of the League. It's not specifically about a belief in a god, but I'm sure there are those who interpret it that way. I think there's a difference between an individual's personal faith, and religion as an institution.”

“But institutions are made up of people. I mean, it's people with their personal faiths that come together. You're saying they can't do good things?”

She is thinking of the orphanage where she grew up, and the church where she worked for years. Even if they aren't perfect, there are people there who care, who do everything they can to make a difference. And he calls it a breeding ground for corruption?!

“No, I know there are people, and churches, who do good things. But things like letters of indulgence...”

“Come on, that was hundreds of years ago!”

They have passed through town and alone at the side of the road is a two-story wooden house. 

“I think that religion keeps people from reaching their full potential,” Bane says as he stops outside the house. “The concept of sin and repentance is a never ending cycle that only creates guilt.”

“So you don't believe that there is a right and a wrong?”

“No, of course I do. But I don't think that we are accountable to a higher power, we are accountable to ourselves and the world we live in.”

“Well, that's very practical, isn't it?”

“Why are you so angry?” He looks at her. “It's not a problem for me if you believe in God.”

She is angry. She's also on the verge of tears, and that makes her angry with herself. She stares out the window at the house. It's an ugly, box-like building. 

“But you're saying I can't reach my full potential if I do.”

He's quiet for a few seconds. 

“Does it matter?” he says then. “You don't agree.”

Why is she even discussing this with him? 

“I guess not,” she says, but it feels like acquiescence. She wants to punch holes in his arguments, prove him wrong, but she can't find the words to do that. 

They get out of the car. The house doesn't have a proper garden, it is surrounded by a patch of grass that looks more like a wild field than a lawn, and a couple of spruces. There is a porch on one side of the house, without a railing so it looks unfinished. 

Bane unlocks the front door. Inside it is dusky and the air smells a bit stale. He flips the light-switch in the hall. A staircase, the steps covered with a dark green carpet, leads up to the second floor and straight ahead is the kitchen. It has cupboards made of dark wood and all essentials, but no room for a table or chairs. Instead there is a dining room, although it isn't grand in any way, just a table with room for six people and at the far end of the room is a well-worn couch and a mismatched leather armchair, a radio and record player. It's a room meant to be used, to be lived in. 

“Is this the house where you grew up?” Robin asks.

“Yeah.”

On the right side of the hall is the living room. Bookshelves line the walls and there's a couch and two chairs arranged around a coffee table. Upstairs are a number of bedrooms, four to be precise. 

“This was your room?” Robin asks when Bane has shown the way into one of them.

He nods.

It looks like a room for guests now. There is a bed, a desk by the window, a bookshelf and a wardrobe. There are marks on the wallpaper where things have been pinned to it. Posters of pin-up girls? Athletes? Maps and plans to overthrow the government? Whatever they were, all remnants from his boyhood seems to have been cleared away. 

She grabs the footboard of the bed.

“A double bed?” she says. “You had a lot of company in here?”

Bane looks at her. “No.”

“I'm only joking.”

He nods a little. Doesn't seem to find the joke funny.

“I have to get back,” he says.

“Okay.”

She follows him downstairs again and he plugs in the electrical cord to the refrigerator. He looks in the pantry; aside from a box of crackers it's empty.

“There's a store in town,” he says and pulls some bills from his pocket. He hands them to her. “It only takes about twenty minutes to walk there.”

“Is it safe for me to go there?”

“Just stick to your cover story.”

“I'm one of Talia's people.” She puts the bills in her pocket. 

He catches her arm and pulls her to him, then leans down and kisses her. 

Bane kisses without tongue. She doesn't know if that's because he doesn't like it, or if he lacks the technique. 

His lips are soft. His stubble scratchy. She can taste his breath and feel the warmth of his face close to hers. It's not familiar, but not unfamiliar either. They're kissing in the kitchen of his childhood home, like teenagers stealing a private moment, but they are too old. She can feel the weight of his feelings and she is aware of the gravity of it all.

“Are you still angry because I don't believe in God?” he asks then, his arms still around her.

“I wasn't angry about that.”

“No?” His gaze meets hers. 

“No.”

He pushes her hair away from her face. 

“I have to go,” he says. 

When he has left she is alone. She can't remember the last time she was. The silence seems thick, expanding to fill every corner of the house. 

She wanders into the living room and looks at the titles in the bookshelves. There is a wide variety of literature. 

She was never a fan of those books that seemed to be about women's love for designer clothes more than anything else, until they disappeared, along with the phenomenon that they were about. Love stories are still being published, except the writers nowadays leave out the bits that, supposedly, encourage greed and decadence. Maybe there are still fashion houses in Europe, and handbags and shoes that cost more than a regular person makes in a month or more, but not here. There are different price ranges, but officially there is no fashion industry. 

So she is surprised to find one of those books on one of the shelves. It's a paperback. It's visible from the cracked spine that it has been read. She looks up at the shelves and feels her heart pick up speed, more than during the kissing before. How many banned books will she find here? 

She spends some time having a closer look at the book collection. She doesn't find any other books of the same kind – the al-Ghul family seems to favor literature of more substance – but there are a few titles that can't be found in any library anymore. 

Fucking hypocrites. Although, she can almost hear Bane's voice in her head, what he would say if she were to ask him about it. No doubt he'd quote Sun Tzu. She has no intention of asking him about it, though. She's going to read the books, if she gets the chance to do so. 

Since there isn't any food in the house, she walks into town. She walks past a few houses in need of a paint job and some crooked fences. Two children, clinging to the gate to their garden, stare at her in that way only young children do. 

“Hi,” one of them, the girl, says.

“Hi,” Robin replies and smiles, but she doesn't get a smile in return. 

I want one of each, Bruce said once. It was more or less a joke. They were too young and too restless to seriously think about starting a family. But he meant it. She knew he did, because she did as well. One day. Only that day never came. Maybe it never would have, maybe they would have broken up, gone their separate ways. Or maybe she would have been the mother to his children. The what-ifs hurt, but not as much as they used to. 

She knows Bruce was involved in something, some form of resistance, but she never knew exactly what. He wouldn't tell her. It made her furious at the time, standing idly to the side when she should have been helping. To this day she feels guilty about it. Bruce said that as a former cop she had to keep her head down, she was lucky to escape with nothing but her profession taken from her and she yielded. 

She never did anything. She told herself she was helping in other ways, her work at the church, not the cleaning job, but the voluntary work she did in the evenings. Only now it seems paltry. The only thing she may have accomplished now is to have gotten her friends into trouble. It feels like acid burning inside when she thinks about it, about what the League might have put her friends through, in search of her. 

She has only just turned onto main street when a patrol car pulls up to the curb next to her. It is expected; this is a small town and she is an unfamiliar face. Two officers step out of the car, both of them are young. There isn't a lot of people around and she feels exposed, even though a crowd would have made little to no difference. 

“Halt!” one of them say, even though she has already stopped walking.

His hair, what can be seen of it below the hat, is red. His face is stern, his uniform immaculate. “ID,” he demands.

Her pulse is ticking a little faster. The lies lie ready on her tongue. She digs through her purse, the one Talia gave her, and she drops it. It isn't nerves, it's sheer bad luck. She's about to lean down, pick it up again, when he pulls his weapon.

“Don't move.”

Shit. She holds her hands up. “I dropped it,” she says.

The red haired officer nods to the other one, he has a handsome face that might have looked pleasant if not for the cold look in his eyes, and he snatches her purse up from the ground. She can see a man on the other side of the street, careful not to look this way. The officer rummages through her purse. 

The red haired one is looking her up and down, his gaze lingering on her breasts. Then the other one finds her ID and she can see his expression change, from entitlement to attentiveness. He gestures for his buddy to lower the gun.

“I'm part of a delegation from Seattle,” Robin says and she lowers her hands.

“Ma'am,” the officer says and hands her the purse back. “We didn't know you.”

“I understand.” It's on the tip of her tongue to say something more, that they're doing their jobs well, but she feels it might be overplaying it. 

“We didn't know there was a delegation in town,” the red haired one says. 

“You're welcome to call the office in Seattle,” Robin says.

If they call, Talia's people will answer, check their records and confirm that yes, Olivia Duvall is currently dispatched to the Rocky Mountains. 

“We might,” the red haired one says, and the other one shoots him a dark look.

“That won't be necessary, ma'am. Have a pleasant stay.”

Robin gives the red haired one her best disdainful look, safe behind her cover to do so for once, and continues down the street. She doesn't turn her head, but she feels as if she holds her breath until they have both gotten into the car and driven off.


	12. Chapter 12

“Do you want to go to a dinner?” Bane asks. 

He's just come back to the bedroom. His hair is still wet from the shower and he is shirtless. Robin is still in bed. She woke up only a few minutes ago, when he got up.

She hasn't had time off since she was a child, not like this. For the last week she has done nothing but read, gone for walks, listened to the radio, and slept later and later in the mornings. It invokes memories of summer vacations, although she spent those in the concrete forest of Gotham, rather than in surroundings such as the ones here. 

“What kind of dinner?” she asks. She's lying on her side, looking at him. 

She hasn't seen much of him over the last few days. He leaves early and gets back late. Things are troublesome with his dad, or so she has gathered. He's told her a little bit, but she thinks he finds it difficult to talk about.

“We've called a meeting,” he says. “People are coming from all the zones. There will be a dinner, when everyone arrives.”

“You're throwing a party?”

“Of sorts.”

He sifts through his shirts, looking for a clean one presumably. 

“Okay,” she says. “You're not a fugitive anymore then?”

“The Gotham zone has been declared a hostile territory under its present leadership.”

“Your dad did that?”

“He signed the papers.”

Meaning it's unclear whether Ra's knew what he was signing, is how she interprets that. 

“Gotham is one of the things the meeting is about,” Bane says. He puts his clothes down. “I have no shirts.”

Robin smiles a little. 

“That is funny to you?” he says. He keeps a straight face, but he's joking. At least she thinks he is.

“A little,” she says. 

He's exceptionally fast. Before she has time to react he's grabbed her ankle and pulled her over towards his side of the bed. She yelps. 

“It isn't to me,” he says and lies down on top of her.

He scared the living crap out of her, but he's keeping his weight on his elbows, careful not to squash her.

“It's because you haven't done any laundry,” she says. 

“That's true.”

He holds her gaze, then he kisses her. From kissing spring touches. His hand on her breast. He kisses her neck. She can feel him grow hard. She plays along, caressing his neck, his shoulders, and then he unbuckles his pants. When he's shed them she can feel his hard-on against her thigh, hot and firm. 

“Not without a condom,” she says.

“I know.”

He puts his hand down between her legs instead. He kisses her while he touches her and it breaks her concentration, but at least it keeps him from watching her. She knows she has to reciprocate, so she wraps her fingers around him. The skin is impossibly warm and smooth. He isn't circumcised, which is a first for her.

She didn't think they had any condoms, but apparently he does. He must have bought them, or he had them here. He moves off her to fetch one. When he has his back turned she wipes her hand on the sheet because she doesn't like holding his penis in her hand. 

His erection points up towards his stomach, an outward, obvious arousal. He rolls the condom on, and there's something almost absurd about watching him handling his own hard-on like that. Then he comes back to the bed and lies down on top of her again. “Like this?” 

She nods. He isn't rough when he pushes inside, and she is wet enough to accommodate him, but it's uncomfortable all the same. 

She holds her arms around him as he moves in and out of her body. The morning light that falls in through the window is soft and paints pale yellow squares on the opposite wall. She listens to his breaths. It feels good for him, and maybe it is a mitigating factor that he thinks she likes it too. He isn't hurting her, it's just unpleasant, but at the same time she resents him for his lust. 

When he's finished he holds the condom in place as he pulls out. He sits on the edge of the bed and she waits and watches his broad back while he takes off the condom, then he looks over his shoulder and caresses her leg.

She hasn't shaved her legs or her armpits for years. She was a single woman and was never naked in front of anyone, so it seemed an unnecessary hassle. Starting all of a sudden would have been weird, so she didn't, but he doesn't seem to care. 

His fingers find the scar on her knee, from when she fell from a climbing frame on a playground as a kid. 

“Did someone kiss that to make it better?” he asks. 

That's an odd question. It feels personal, which is perhaps strange considering that he was inside her moments ago. 

“No,” she says. 

He has a lot of scars, expected maybe since he's a soldier, but she doesn't have the expertise to determine how old they are, some of them could be from his childhood. 

He looks at her. It makes her feel scrutinized, so she sits up and kisses his shoulder. 

“I can wash your shirts for you today,” she says. 

“Thank you.”

They get up and get dressed, Bane puts on a shirt that is tolerably clean, and then they have breakfast. They haven't had breakfast together the last few days, because Robin hasn't gotten out of bed until he's already left. 

Sitting across him at the table in the dining room she finds it annoying that he eats so much. She can't say why, she just does. She knows it's irrational, she didn't even have to carry the heavy bags of groceries back from the store, he did that the day before yesterday. It's just irritating that he takes up so much space. He works out, she knows, because he dug out some workout clothes from the wardrobe in the bedroom. It's probably his usual habit, resumed now when he's no longer working at some farm in Florida, pretending to be Eric Richardson. 

She drinks her coffee and looks over his shoulder at the picture on the wall there. It's a reproduction of a well-known painting. 

“Were you always tall?” she says then, because she can't help herself. “When you were a kid too?”

Bane looks at her and nods a little. “Not as tall as I am now.”

Duh. 

Robin keeps her mouth shut, because starting an argument with him about his height is beyond stupid. He looks like maybe he's wondering why she's asking, but then he doesn't bother finding out.

“You should buy yourself something to wear,” he says. 

“What? Oh, the dinner. Like what?”

“A dress?” He phrases it like a question, and she smiles a little. “Or whatever you feel would be appropriate.” 

“Is there a dress code?”

“Not as such.”

When he has left she puts a load in the washing machine in the scullery adjacent to the dining room. She wonders who designed this house. It must have been expanded or rebuilt at some point, because the layout doesn't make any sense. She also wonders how long Bane and his family lived here, because there's no wallpaper in the dining room. 

She has been snooping a bit, while alone in the house. She found some boxes, stacked in one of the bedrooms, and she looked through some of them, but it was just normal, boring family stuff. She did find some of Bane's old things, in a box marked with his name – a teddy bear missing both of its ears and one eye, loved it seems, and apparently he liked trains because there were some carefully put together models of train engines. She stopped with the prying after that, though, feeling mildly disgusted with herself for doing it in the first place. There can't be anything here that he doesn't want her to see, or he wouldn't have left her here by herself, and going through a family's personal belongings, no matter who they are, feels vulgar.

She makes herself some more coffee and puts on a record. There was a record player at the orphanage and sometimes they played music during playtime. She's never had one of her own, though. Selina did and they used to sit at her place, the dingy room she rented above a tailor's shop, and listen to music and talk, sometimes getting ready to go out. Selina dated one of Bruce's friends for a short while and they went out on doubles. 

Robin lifts the pickup and the music stop abruptly. Her fingers feel numb when she puts the record back in its sleeve. That's what they got her for, Selina, her fucking records. She must have pissed someone off, or someone denounced her for personal gain, or both. The horrible irony of it all is that Selina liked the League. She said it was about time that someone knocked the rich on their fat asses. 

In the silence Robin presses her hands to her face for a few seconds. She misses her so much. For years after she was arrested, it was early on after the coup d'état, Robin had conversations with her in her head. She stopped, because she was worried that it was a sign she was going crazy, although Father Reilly said to her, when she told him, that he talked to Jesus every day and no one had yet declared him insane. 

Unlike in the bookshelf, there are no banned records in the music collection. There's some classical music, but also hits she remembers from her teenage years. She can't imagine that Ra's listened to those, it must have been Bane and his sisters. 

She feels so alone, she can't stand it. She feels guilty, about everything, about sleeping with Bane this morning. 

She busies herself as best she can. She goes for a walk and doesn't see a single person. 

Later that day she folds the laundry on the bed. A loose button comes off from one of the garments and it makes a popping sound as it falls to the floor. She looks around, but can't see it anywhere, and eventually she gets down on her knees to look under the bed. There it is, small and white in the dust, a lot further in than she would have thought possible considering the angle from which it fell. 

She has to lie down flat on her stomach to reach it and when she does she turns her head ever so slightly and that's when she sees it, markings on the wall. She can't really make out what it is, but it looks weird enough to make her curious and when she gets up she pulls the bed away from the wall.

IIIII 

It's carved into the wooden panel that covers the lower half of the wall, over and over again, low enough not to be visible when the bed is in place. A chill goes up her spine, because of the sheer strangeness of it. There's no doubt about who has done it, because there is a rough D at the beginning. 

Why did he do that? She assumes he must have been a child at the time. She counts them, but it doesn't mean anything to her. Counting days, maybe? 

She puts the bed back and decides to put it out of her mind. But she can't. 

She is in bed, but awake, when Bane gets back that evening. He undresses and gets in under the cover. He gives her a kiss and then he lies back against the pillow. He looks tired, she thinks. 

“I moved the bed earlier,” she says, even though she has told herself not to. “To look for a button. I saw the scratches on the wall.”

He isn't looking at her. 

“Did you do those?” she asks. 

He nods a little, then reaches above his head and puts his hand through the bars of the headboard to feel the wall behind the bed. 

“Why?”

He's silent for a second. “It was after my mom died,” he says then. 

He pulls his hand back. 

“Did you count the days?” she says. 

“Yeah.” He looks at her. 

The room seems quiet.

“How old were you?” Robin asks.

“Eight.”

In the faint light from the bedside lamp his eyes look dark. 

“What was she like?”

“Beautiful.”

“Don't all boys think that their mothers are beautiful?”

“Perhaps.”

The moment feels raw. She isn't prepared for the intimacy of the conversation. He must have been sad, or angry, or scared, or all of it, when he made those carvings. She doesn't really want to know that, but she brought it up. 

“You stopped counting eventually,” she says. 

He nods a little. “Didn't you?”

She has told him she doesn't have any family, she told him that back in Gotham when he wanted to know about her habits, but she never told him she's been an orphan since childhood. 

“How did you know I was a kid when my parents died?” she says. 

“I didn't, but it was my guess.”

They look at each other. She doesn't want him to ask anything more, so she moves closer and puts her lips to his. Then he holds her for a bit. The hair on his chest tickles her face. He's warm. She lies still in his embrace for a while, but then she moves.

“I can't sleep when you're holding me,” she says. It's the truth. She never could with previous boyfriends either. 

Her side of the bed feels chilly now, in comparison. She pulls the cover up and wraps her arms around the pillow. 

When she wakes up the next morning, she is right next to him again. She has moved in her sleep and his morning erection is poking her hip. Slowly she edges away, but she feels his hand on her back then, gently stroking her skin, so she turns around. His eyes are open but he looks like he just woke up.

His hand rests lightly on her waist and he looks at her. 

“I love you,” he says. 

The air in the room turns solid, freezing the moment. 

Robin doesn't want to say those words and not mean them, even though they are just words and she has already let her actions speak so much louder. But she's looking right at him and not saying it back seems impossible. 

“I love you too.” 

It doesn't choke her, but after she has leaned closer and kissed his cheek she gets up. She goes to the bathroom and turns on the shower, as if the water can somehow drown out the sound of her thoughts. 

Why did he have to say it? How can he even think that he loves her, he doesn't know her! 

She stands there, naked on the bathroom floor, while anguish nests in her chest. She's only ever said those words to one other person in her life. She meant them then, and now she feels as if she has tarnished that. But there are other emotions mixed in too – she feels guilty about lying to Bane like that. He's a person. She can pretend all she wants that he isn't, but she knows better.

And in the back of her mind is something else. Fear. The dawning realization that she may never get out of this relationship. He keeps carrying it forward and her only way to end it would be to tell him straight out that she wants to break up. And take her chances regarding the consequences. 

He says he loves her, so maybe he'll have his heart broken and be sad for a while, or maybe he will do something else. He could send her to some hellish place where she'll be forced to live the rest of her life. He could have her arrested. He could even kill her and get away clean. She's not sure she trusts him not to hurt her, if she hurts him first. He's tender now, but she remembers his hand around her throat, that time in her apartment when he got suspicious because she was out for so long. She simply doesn't know how he would react.

This morning Bane doesn't leave right away after breakfast. It has started raining and it patters softly against the windows. 

“Do you mind if I turn on the radio?” she says. “There's a show now that I wanna hear.”

“Not at all.” 

They both sit down on the couch at the far end of the dining room, but they've only sat there for half a second before Bane lies down with his head against one armrest. He pulls Robin with him, so she ends up lying on top of him, her head against his chest. 

He's quiet throughout her show. Maybe he's listening, although he didn't hear part one so she's not sure how much sense it makes to him. She finds it hard to concentrate on anything other than the position they're in, the closeness, the familiarity it expresses. She feels the slow rise and fall of his chest, the low thrum of his heartbeat. He strokes her hair and she wonders what he's thinking about. 

He gathers her hair in a ponytail in his hand, then pulls it out of the way and starts kneading her shoulders. That hurts, but not in a bad way. 

“Not so hard,” she says when he uses too much force. He eases his grip, then works his way down her back. 

She doesn't protest when he pushes up her shirt, so that his hands are directly against her skin. His fingers are strong and sure, and he doesn't accidentally press right against her spine or some other uncomfortable spot. She feels almost lightheaded, because it feels so good. She doesn't want him to stop, and he doesn't. 

She feels herself get heavier and heavier on top of him. And she feels something else, a warm sensation between her legs. She lies still while he works out tension and knots from her back, and because she is lying on him she knows he isn't hard. This isn't sexual for him, which is perhaps why her body reacts the way it does. He doesn't know and she keeps it to herself. 

When he pulls down her shirt again she doesn't move. 

“Am I heavy?” she asks.

“No, it's fine.”

“You're really good at that.”

He pets her hair. “I'm glad you think so.”

“Do you have today off?” 

“No, I have some things I need to do later, but I wanted to spend some time with you.”

It has stopped raining and they go for a walk. Robin has kept to the roads when she's been out, afraid of getting lost, but Bane knows his way around here and they go straight out into the wilderness. 

It's not cold, but the air is crisp and smells of damp earth. Robin is wearing a coat that used to belong to Bane's sister Nyssa, which he found in a wardrobe in the house and said she could use. The skirt and the shirt are hers too. They fit Robin pretty well. But she has bought underwear and stockings at a store in town, so at least those are her own.

It's peaceful, beautiful. What makes people who live out here want to overthrow the government and take over the country? They had a good life, judging from what she's seen at the house. Maybe it's Ra's, maybe he has always been a fanatic and he turned his children into fanatics too. 

They reach a steep upwards slope, and Bane goes up first, then holds his hand out to her and helps pull her up. 

“Do we have to go this way?” she says, because she can see another slope just up ahead.

“I wanna show you something.”

“Okay. Did you play here as a child?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did you have friends here?”

He nods. 

“Do they still live around here?”

“I don't know.” He's quiet for a few seconds, then he says “I had acquaintances, people I was friendly with, schoolmates. My true friends are in the League.”

Robin looks at him. It sounds alienating. 

“I'm not in the League.”

“No. But you've had my life in your hands.”

“That's a prerequisite for being friends with you?”

He smiles then. He has crooked teeth. 

“It helps,” he says and she can't tell if he's being serious or not. 

They make it up the next slope. Robin thinks about her friends, but quickly pushes the thought away. Except, Father Reilly is still alive, she hopes. 

She glances at Bane. 

“I have a friend,” she says. “Back in Gotham. Father Reilly, he's the priest at the church where I worked. I'm worried about him, I mean, we were friends, and then I disappeared. He might have been questioned.”

Bane nods a little. “He probably was,” he says. “As far as I know, though, they haven't connected your disappearance from Gotham to me. It will have been treated as suspicious and investigated, but your friend doesn't know anything. A good interrogator will be able to conclude that he's innocent.”

“Except maybe he isn't...”

Bane glances at her. Her heart is beating hard in her chest. She's betting a whole lot on him being a human being, on his feelings for her and that he'll listen to her.

“It's not what you may think,” she says. “He's a good man, and he's a good Christian. If someone needs his help he gives it. We're talking a hot meal, or letting someone stay in the church for a night, without any questions asked... It's nothing organized, he's not really involved in anything, but if he was questioned and they found out about that...”

The guilt she has been trying to push down forces its way to the surface. 

“It would be my fault,” she says. “He ran the orphanage where I grew up, I've known him all my life. I know you don't agree with what he did, but he'd never hurt anyone.”

Bane doesn't say anything for a short, horrendously quiet, moment. 

“When we take back Gotham, I will help your friend,” he finally says.

Relief floods her. Please God, just don't let it be too late. 

“I will do this once,” Bane says. “For you, because he cared for you when you were growing up, and as repayment for the food and shelter you provided for me.”

He looks at her. 

“But you're wrong when you say he doesn't hurt anyone,” he says. “Subversive activity hurts a lot of people.”

Robin has to struggle to hold back what she wants to say. It buzzes in her head instead, like a swarm of angry bees. 

They walk in silence for a short while. The mood feels strained and Robin doesn't know what to say. She is petrified of saying the wrong thing, something that would make him change his mind. She can't break up with him, she realizes. Not now, maybe not ever. 

“Thank you,” she says. 

He takes her hand. 

“Are you angry with me?” she asks then.

“No.”

“Disappointed?”

“Perhaps, a little bit.”

They reach the top of a hill, and in front of them is an amazing view. In the valley below is a lake, it's surface clear as a mirror, and thick green forest covers the hillsides on both sides of it. At the far end are mountains, their tops powdered with chalky white snow. It's like a painting. 

Bane is still holding her hand. 

“This is beautiful,” she says. 

She looks up at him and he looks back. Then they kiss. She can feel his warm breath against her face, his full lips moving against hers. 

He's disappointed in her, maybe questioning her motives for keeping quiet about something that she should have reported to the authorities. She wants to make him forget that, stop that train of thought, so she brushes her tongue against his lower lip. He doesn't open his mouth until she's more insistent and she thinks that perhaps he doesn't like it. But then his tongue meets hers, warm and slick. 

It's just a kiss, but kissing like this is intimate, and wet. He's a bit hesitant, not brilliant at it. Some small part of her finds that endearing, while the rest of her thinks doing this in the first place is gross. 

She didn't intend it to be foreplay, but when she feels that he has a hard-on, she takes things further. Uses the momentum. She presses herself close, her hips against him. He lets her unzip his pants and take out his cock. It's blood-hot in her hand and she gives it a few firm strokes. But he hesitates when she hitches up her skirt to pull down her underwear. 

“Robin...”

“No, I want you in me.” She feels like the heroine in a very bad erotic novel. He looks at her for a second, and then he gives in.

He lifts her up. There are trees all around them and he positions her against one, his hands on her ass. She wraps her legs around him and then he thrusts into her. It hurts because she wasn't ready and he feels huge inside her. 

But she's doing it, because he's going to save Father Reilly for her. That's what she thinks about as he fucks her. And her body helps her, opens for him, so it isn't painful after the first push. She holds on to his wide shoulders and the coat prevents the bark of the tree from digging into her back and her butt. It feels different without a condom, when it's his naked skin that is sliding against her. She's not going to get pregnant, she thinks, because she didn't last time.

He comes suddenly, presses close as if he's trying to bury himself in her, and exhales sharply. He pants for a second, and then he turns his head. They look at each other a moment.

“Did it feel good?” he asks. 

She's not sure what prompted him to ask that. 

“Yeah, it did,” she says. She smiles and kisses him. 

Then he pulls out and she can feel the wetness. He puts her down gently. They straighten their clothes and then they have to face the awkward fact that they, once again, have had unprotected sex. 

Robin knows her reasons, and she figures his was that he was horny, but even though they're miles apart, she feels as if the two of them are together in the aftermath. Perhaps it is, in part, because she likes him much better after his orgasms. He isn't big on cuddling after sex, and he doesn't expect anything of her then.

“We shouldn't keep doing this,” he says. 

“You're blaming me?”

“No.” He looks at her. “Do you want to have a baby?” 

Jesus, that's what he thinks? That she's trying to ensnare him, by getting pregnant with his child?

“No!” she says.

“Not ever?”

That takes her off guard. She grasps for something to say. 

“At some point. Not now,” she manages. She looks at him. “Do you?”

“Not now.”

He's pretty transparent in that moment though. She thinks he's being honest, this was an impulsive heat of the moment thing. But in a few years he's going to be forty, and he wants to have kids. Even if he's a man, he might have felt the clock ticking and time running away from him. 

He might get his wish. She can feel the stickiness between her legs. She feels dizzy. What has she done? 

“Robin...” He takes a step forward and takes her head in his hands. “Even if it isn't ideal, if you should get pregnant, we'll manage.”

She looks at him and he meets her gaze. 

“I wouldn't abandon you,” he says. 

She believes him. But it doesn't matter, she can't have his children. 

“But I'd rather wait, so lets stop having sex without a condom,” he says. “I'll promise to exercise better self-control.” 

She's not sure she trust his self-control regarding this. She convinced him without much trouble this time. That's on her, she knows that. 

He picks something, a piece of bark maybe, from her hair. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”


	13. Chapter 13

Robin has bought a dress at a store in town that sells women's clothes. She spends some time getting ready, because it's been a while since she made any effort regarding her appearance and she's out of practice. She's alone in the house, Bane is going to come and pick her up later. 

She pulls her hair back with a clasp and even puts on a bit of make up. She remembers seeing Barbara Gordon, Jim's wife, before they went out to some formal dinner. Robin watched their kids on a few such occasions, so she was at their house. Barbara Gordon was a beautiful woman. Frankly, she was a bit out of Jim's league and quite a bit younger than him too. He had other qualities, though.

For which Bane killed him. Robin stares at herself in the mirror. She's alive because she was willing to keep her mouth shut, and, as it turned out, quite a bit more than that. She might have gotten pregnant with the man who sentenced most of her friends to death. She lets him love her. What kind of person does that? 

The kind who wants to survive, maybe. The kind who can put up with anything. 

She turns away from her own gaze in the mirror. 

When she hears the front door open a while later she goes downstairs. Bane is in uniform. She's never seen him in that before. When he made public appearances, back in Gotham, he always wore cargo pants and military boots, along with his bandana. A kind of paramilitary style. She remembers that he always had the collar of whatever coat or jacket he was wearing turned up. She noticed that because other people starting doing it too, especially young men. A trend in a trendless world. Now that she knows him, at least to a degree, she's thinking that he probably only did it because of the chilly winds that seem to perpetually blow through Gotham. 

“You look very handsome,” she says and smiles. 

His gaze lingers on her appearance and it makes her feel self-conscious. He smiles a little at her. “You're beautiful,” he says, then gives her a kiss. “Here.”

He holds something out to her. It's an ID-card. Robin John-Blake it says. Her correct date of birth, personal identity number, height, hair-color and eye-color. 

“Is it real?”

He nods. 

“Am I not a fugitive?”

“You may be in Gotham, not here.”

She takes out the ID that says she's Olivia Duvall from her purse and puts the new one in there instead. 

“Are you using your real name?” she asks and he nods. 

She straightens her dress. 

“This is okay then?” she asks. “I didn't really know what to wear.”

“It's fine, you're fine.”

He pulls his hand over his neck.

“Dad was going to make a speech tomorrow, announce that he's stepping down and passing on leadership to Talia, but we can't trust him to say that. He's all there one minute, and the next... he doesn't remember any of it.”

He stares at nothing in particular and Robin thinks he is going to continue, so she waits. 

“We have to tell everyone ourselves that Talia is taking over, and convince them to accept her as leader of the League. That's partly why I asked you to come tonight. It'll look better, less threatening. Nyssa is coming too.”

He looks at her and she meets his gaze. It sounds kind of as if she's helping him cover up a conspiracy, but what choice does she have? And considering how mixed up she is with him, it's in her self-interest to help him as well. The things she was thinking about earlier float to the surface, but she forces them down again. 

“So what do I have to do?” she asks. 

“Nothing. It's just a dinner.”

He has parked on the street outside. The sun has set and only a faint glimmer of light remains above the mountains in the west. 

“What do I say if anyone asks what I do for a living?” she asks when they've gotten into the car. 

“You don't have to tell anyone that you used to be a police officer,” he says. “No one knows that.”

“No, I mean now. I'm a cleaner.” An unemployed one at that. “Don't they expect something, I don't know, more reputable?”

He frowns. “I'm not ashamed of you,” he says. “Your line of work is an honorable one.”

“Everyone doesn't think like that.” She is ashamed. And she is ashamed that she is ashamed, because she knows that in theory he is right. 

“Then they are wrong.” 

And that's that. He doesn't offer to lie for her. 

“You're gonna have to wear a blindfold for the drive,” he says, “since we're going to the headquarter and you aren't a member of the League.”

Robin gapes at him for a second. “But I put on make up,” she says.

He looks as if that isn't a problem he has ever encountered in his life and never considered. 

“There are bathrooms, you can freshen up.”

He takes out something that looks very much like one of the bandanas she's seen him using, but instead of covering the lower half of her face, he ties it across her eyes. She doesn't like it, not one bit. 

“Is it too tight?” he asks. 

She feels him straightening it by her cheek. 

“It's fine,” she says and she can't keep the irritation out of her voice. 

He ignores that. 

She can't see a thing. She can't see him and she can't see the road, every movement of the car is a surprise, and it feels demeaning. 

“Can you at least talk to me?” she says. 

“What do you want to talk about?” 

She doesn't know. 

“What's the official story about your dad? Do people know he's ill?”

“No. Only a select few.”

“So what do I say if someone asks me about him?”

“No one will.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they will assume that you would tell me that they had asked.”

“Won't they think it's weird that he's not there?”

“No. Tonight is just a social gathering, it's not uncommon for him to skip those.”

“Is he a party pooper?”

It's the fucking blindfold. She would never have said that, if she had to look at him while she did. 

He's quiet for what feels like a long moment. 

“That's my father you're talking about,” he says then. 

The urge to take the blindfold off is almost irresistible. 

“I'm sorry, I was only joking.”

It's quiet for a while. Robin scratches her temple underneath the blindfold and it feels as if Bane is looking at her, but she has no idea if he really is. 

“I like him,” she says then. “Your dad. He seems nice.”

She means it. He did seem nice, he was polite and friendly towards her. She's not going to hold that the pulled a gun on her against him, because of his illness. There's no point in thinking about all the rest, who he is and what he has done, because now he's an old man and she can't say any of that to Bane anyway.

“I'm sorry he's ill,” she says and it feels like she's talking to herself when she can't see Bane and he doesn't reply.

“Thank you,” he says then. 

They make a left turn, she can feel it. 

“Do you know how to do that thing, you know, if you're blindfolded in a car, you can memorize the turns and count how far you've gone?” she asks. 

She's read about it, probably in some adventure story, but it was also the kind of topic that sometimes came up at the precinct. Discussing what ifs, and comparing dick sizes, figuratively speaking. 

“Yes. Do you?”

She thinks that he sounds a tiny bit amused. 

“No. Have you ever had to do it, for real?”

“Yes.” 

It goes quiet again. They're on a winding road now, it turns this way and that way. She's starting to feel nauseous. She tries to take deep breaths, but it doesn't help, it feels as if they're driving around on a damn roller-coaster, and the more she tries not to think about it, the worse it gets.

“Stop the car, I'm gonna be sick.”

He does. She struggles with the blindfold, not caring that she's not allowed, and only just manages to get the door open and get out before she throws up. It burns acidly in her throat and tastes bitter in her mouth. 

Bane comes around the car. She's leaning forward, but her stomach doesn't cramp again and after a few seconds she straightens up. 

“Are you okay?” he says. His hand feels warm against the side of her face. 

She nods. The nausea is already subsiding, the solid ground under her feet steadying her. They're on a narrow road on a small field. It's a starlit night and the moon is almost full, so she can see the dark forest ahead and the mountains that loom on all sides. And she can see Bane, looking at her. 

“I got carsick, because I couldn't see,” she says. 

He nods a little. 

“Do you want some water?” he asks.

“Yeah, do you have water?”

He gets a bottle from the back of the car and hands it to her. She rinses her mouth and spits on the ground, then drinks a few sips. She really hopes it was just carsickness. 

“Do you feel better?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

He picks up the bandana from the ground where she has dropped it, and throws it over the backs of the seats in the car. 

“I don't have to wear it?” she asks. 

“You can't if you're gonna be sick.”

“I have no idea where we are anyway. And it's dark.”

He nods a little. She drinks some more water and takes deep breaths of fresh air. 

“I'm okay now,” she says. 

He caresses her cheek. 

They get back in the car and she turns on the lamp in the car. He waits while she has a look in the mirror on the inside of the sun visor. He probably thinks she's vain. Maybe she is, but mostly she is just nervous about being in a room full of extremely powerful people. 

She feels like she shouldn't be looking out the window as they drive on, but there's not much else to look at and, like she said, it's so dark she can't see much outside the headlights of the car anyway. 

Eventually they reach a tall wall, stretching out in both directions and disappearing into the darkness. She can make out armed guards on top of it. There are guards on the ground too, wearing dark combat clothes and holding automatic weapons. What they're guarding is the gate.

“They're gonna ask to see your ID,” Bane says. 

Two grim-looking men approach the car, one on each side and when Bane rolls down his window, Robin does the same. 

“State your name and business,” the guard on Bane's side of the car barks.

“Dorrance al-Ghul and Robin John-Blake,” Bane answers for both of them. “Here for the summit.”

“IDs.”

Bane hands over his ID so Robin gives hers to the guard on her side. She thought border control was bad, but truth is the police officers look like toy soldiers compared to these guys. 

The guard looks at her ID and then he says her name and personal identity number into his radio. It crackles. 

“She's clear,” comes a tinny voice after a moment. 

He gives her the ID back without a word. She turns her head in time to see the guard on Bane's side grin.

“Have a good time, commander,” he says before raising his hand in the air to signal that they should be let through. 

Bane knows him. And here she was getting nervous because of the grim severeness of it all. 

The gate opens in front of them.

“Did you put me on the guest list?” Robin says. 

She says it more or less as a joke, but Bane says “Yes.”

They drive through the gate and this is the military compound she first expected to see when Bane said they were going to meet his dad. Large, square buildings line what seems to be a maze of streets and the place must be huge. She can't see where it ends, the structures blend into the shadows cast by the tall mountains on both sides. 

No one knew this was here? The League just hid up here in the mountains, amassing their forces and biding their time, until they could take over? It kind of makes her wonder what the previous government was doing. The democratic structures and processes she so painstakingly learned about in school, to the degree that she felt quite proud of herself the first, and only, time she went to vote, must have seemed like a joke to these people. 

Bane slows down outside a tall building. A lot of the windows are lit up, the front doors are open and light spills out onto the wide staircase that leads up to the entrance. There's a car just in front of them and Robin watches the driver step out and walk around the car to open the door to the backseat. A man in a uniform steps out first and after him comes a woman wearing a dress. The driver closes the door after them and walks back to the driver's seat. 

Robin didn't realize it would be that high-end. Bane is driving himself. Perhaps there is valet parking, like at fancy hotels. But instead of stopping right in front of the staircase, Bane just steers to the left and parks on the other side of the street, at an angle and quite illegally had this been a normal street in a normal place. 

The air is chilly, but she's not sure if the goosebumps she has is because of that or this place. She takes Bane's arm when he offers it. 

“Do you feel okay, not sick?” he asks and she nods.

He's wondering if it was just carsickness too, she thinks. They walk up the stairs and is met by a buzzing of voices when they walk through the doors. 

The first thing she sees are the flags. They're hanging from the ceiling and bigger versions are fastened to the wall like banners. They all carry the same insignia, the League of Shadows' coat of arms in gray on a black background. For a second she feels as if the room is shrinking, the eyes of the faceless warrior that's in the middle of each flag, watching her from every direction. 

That flag is not seen very often anymore. In the beginning it was everywhere, a constant reminder of who were in charge now, but then it more or less disappeared. The League was incorporated into every governing body anyway and it serves their purpose that you never know who's in the inner circle. It's in line with how the leaders of each zone cover their faces and use aliases in public. 

No one is covering their face here. There are a lot of different military uniforms and most of the people wearing them are men, but not all. Bane keeps his hand on Robin's back, resting lightly between her shoulder blades, and she is grateful for that, because right then she feels very, very small. 

There is a lot of handshaking – firm, efficient clasps. About half of those who shake hands with Bane ignore Robin, and she doesn't know if she should be relieved or offended. The other half look as if they expect Bane to introduce her, which he does. 

Everyone is polite, friendly, these people know each other, but it's restrained somehow. Perhaps it's all that power, gathered in one place. It's almost palpable in the air. 

Bane was right, no one asks about Ra's, even though everyone here must know that Bane is his son. No one asks about Gotham either. Robin isn't sure how much is known, it's not as if she really knows the whole story, but she can see the question in some people's eyes. Bane doesn't volunteer any information either. He gets a lot of 'It's good to see you's', and curt nods underlining the statement, which he acknowledges with a nod of his own, or at the most a 'You too'. 

A gong rings, calling to dinner. There are several long tables covered with white table cloths. There is a seating arrangement and Robin's seat is diagonally across one of the tables from Bane. Her dinner partner is a man called Adrian, or at least that's how he introduces himself and it's the name on the nameplate next to his glass. Hers just says 'Robin', as if she is the only Robin in the world. Presumably she is the only Robin here. There is a dead Robin, down in Florida, who died so that she could be here, alive and sitting at a dinner table. That's a thought she doesn't know what to do with. 

“What can I get you to drink?” Adrian asks. 

There are carafes of wine on the table, red and white, as well as beer bottles, but there are far more water bottles, as if they expect most people to drink that. Robin wouldn't mind a glass of wine. It might help her look more at ease, as well as actually make her feel a bit more at ease, but Bane is sitting right there and she might be pregnant with his child, so he might not like that. 

“Water, please,” she says. 

Robin feels full after the first course. The hum of voices grate against her eardrums. Laughter rings through the air. Adrian refills her glass for her and the courses keep coming. 

She doesn't want to be here. It feels unreal that she is. The thin material of her dress makes her feel naked. These people swat people like her like flies. 

She looks at Bane. He is looking at someone across the table, listening to what they're saying. Of all the faces around her, his is the only familiar one. She watches his expressions. He frowns, then nods, a brief upwards tug of the corners of his mouth, not really a smile. She knows every single one. That's her boyfriend, as crazy as that is. 

He turns his head then and meets her gaze. She smiles, automatically, and he smiles back. It changes his entire face when he does that, the expression in his eyes, he looks younger despite the laugh lines that deepen around his eyes. But it's brief, only for her. 

She wonders what his laughter sounds like. In all the time they've been together he has never laughed, not even when he jokes with her. Then again, neither has she, as far as she can remember. 

They break up from the tables after the dessert. Since Robin doesn't know anyone, unless Bane's sisters count and she says hi to both of them, being properly introduced to Nyssa this time, she goes where he goes, talks to the people he talks to. 

They sit at a table and the topics of conversation are mostly intellectual ones, rather than fun ones. Bane has gotten rid of his tie and the top buttons of his shirt are open, revealing a bit of chest hair. He talks about chess with another man, at length. Robin doesn't play chess, but she understands enough to realize that Bane knows some particular distinguished chess game, move by move, and he corrects the chess enthusiast across the table about it at one point. 

It feels as if the party is happening around them, outside the table where they are sitting, but Robin doesn't mind. 

Bane kisses her temple.

“Are you tired?” he asks.

“No, I'm alright.”

“Come on.”

He gets up from his seat so she does too. He puts his arm around her as they head for one of the exits.

“Let's get some fresh air,” he says.

Instead of heading towards the front door, where they came in, he takes her down a corridor, then up a flight of stairs.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Somewhere less crowded.”

It looks exactly the same everywhere, the same dull color on the walls, the floors the same dark green linoleum and the doors are identical. It gives the place an air of institution. In the dining hall the floor was a polished, dark wood, and given how old this building looks to be, Robin's guess is they've covered up those beautiful floors here with that horrible carpet. 

They turn a corner and Barsad is standing there. Robin recognizes him, but is so surprised to see him, to see anyone, that he looks incongruous. He looks at Bane and holds up two fingers. 

Bane puts his hands on Robin's shoulders and places her with her back against the wall.

“Wait right here,” he says, keeping his voice down, and then gestures for her to be quiet by holding his index finger over his mouth.

Robin is at a loss for words anyway, too confused to formulate any questions aside from perhaps 'What is going on?'. As it is she doesn't say that either, but a hard knot of worry has formed in her belly. 

Bane and Barsad turns towards one of the doors and Robin expects them to kick it down, but instead Bane takes something from his pocket and picks the lock. He gets it done quickly, soundlessly, then he and Barsad walk inside.

Robin hears a sharp noise that can't be anything other than a gunshot, fired from a gun with a silencer. A yelp. 

For a second she feels paralyzed, because she doesn't know who fired that gun, or who the bullet hit. Then she hears Bane.

“You think I wouldn't find out?”

“There's been a misunderstanding...” The other voice sounds choked, frightened. 

Robin leaves her spot by the wall and crosses the corridor. The linoleum swallows the sound of her steps. She peeks into the room. 

It is a simple bedroom. Bane is with his back to her and Barsad stands a little to the side, holding a gun but not pointing it at anything, or anyone. On the floor is a man, blood trickles from a hole in his head, a perfect hit. He is shirtless and his feet are bare. Robin feels sick, as if she can smell the blood.

Facing Bane is another man. Robin recognizes him. They met him earlier, he was polite, pleasant towards her. Now he's staring at Bane with fear on his face. He isn't wearing any pants, but his shirt hangs down low enough to cover his genitals. 

“I don't know what you think you know, Bane, but I assure you, you've been misinformed,” he reels off. 

“I think not,” Bane says, and his voice is even. “We know all about your communes with John Daggett.”

“Like it or not, he is the leader of the Gotham zone right now, and I have to communicate with our neighboring zone!”

Robin suddenly remembers the man's name. Stryver. He is looking at Bane and doesn't see her, but she's fairly certain Barsad has to be able to see her in his peripheral vision. 

“It is the nature of that communication that concerns me,” Bane says. 

Stryver's gaze drifts to the man lying dead on the floor. It looks involuntary, as if he can't help himself.

“Don't worry,” Bane says. “You will join him soon.”

A cold shiver goes up Robin's spine. She doesn't really want to witness this, but she feels as if her feet are rooted to the floor. 

“I just want to know how many of your troops you have lent him, and where they are located,” Bane says.

“Why should I tell you?” Stryver says, and there is a trace of anger in his voice now too, beneath the fear. “You will kill me either way.”

“True. But if you tell me I will do it quickly.”

Stryver takes what looks like a couple of difficult breaths.

“Spare my children,” he says. “And my wife.”

Bane nods. 

Stryver tells him about the troops and then, after he's finished, suddenly tries to take a swing at Bane, but Bane blocks it.

“You were always a paper pusher,” Bane says. 

Stryver doesn't give up, in panic perhaps, desperate to live, or determined to go down fighting, but the fight is short and then Bane gets him in a good grip, and snaps his neck. 

The sound of it is unnaturally loud, it seems to reverberate through the air. Bane drops him to the floor, a limp heap of limbs. Stryver's shirt has ridden up and in death he is exposed, undignified. 

Barsad glances at Robin and that makes Bane turn his head. He looks at her and she can't read his expression, it's as if he doesn't have one. She feels as if she has stopped breathing at some point during the last few minutes. 

Bane turns to Barsad again. 

“They're gonna sleep in late tomorrow,” he says.

Barsad nods. 

“Then send some easily recognizable part of him to Daggett.”

Barsad nods again.

“His children, are they small?”

“Yeah, five and seven.”

“Get them a new family.”

Bane walks over to where Robin is standing and takes her arm.

“I thought I told you to wait outside,” he says as he walks her out the door, but he doesn't sound angry. At least she doesn't think so. It's hard to tell over the buzzing in her ears.

It's one thing to know in theory what he can do, what he has done, and another to see it. They walk down the corridor and she feels his hand in her hair. She wants to pull away and then it dawns on her what he's doing. He's messing up her hair, making it look like they sneaked off for another, completely different reason. 

She does pull away then. She looks at him and he looks back.

“You used me,” she says.

“He was an enemy,” Bane says. “He needed to be destroyed.”

What can you reply to that? 

“You could have told me.”

Bane's gaze feels intense. “I could have.”

And the truth is she would have done exactly what he asked of her. She thinks of the people she has lost – Bruce, Selina, Jim – clings to them because it feels as if she doesn't she'll lose herself. Then she thinks about the living, about herself, about Father Reilly. 

“Can we leave now?” she asks.

“Soon.”


	14. Chapter 14

Bane leaves the house early the next morning and he is gone for days. That gives Robin plenty of time to think, about what she saw, about everything. The man who was shot had to have been Stryver's boyfriend or lover, their state of undress suggests as much. She thinks about what Bane said about Stryver's children, find them another family, and concludes that despite his promise, he was never going to spare his wife. 

Bane is a really good liar, and she wonders what lies he's telling her. Or is he telling them to himself, because he wants so badly for her to love him?

She worries about being pregnant and after a day without any word, she starts to worry about what's going on up at the headquarters too. Who's to say that Bane hasn't gotten his neck snapped? He's big and strong, but he isn't indestructible. She knows that for a fact. She has seen him when he's down and out, she's had her hands covered in his warm, sticky blood and knows that his body can be soft and fragile, just like everybody else's. 

The morning of day three she's frantic. There isn't a phone in the house, not that she knows what number to call anyway. It also means Bane can't call her. Maybe the fact that no one has come for her means that everything is fine. Or maybe it means that Bane is dead and they just can't be bothered with her. 

Sitting there, not knowing, it's worse than anything else, it's unbearable. She finds an old backpack and packs some food and a water bottle, some clothes, the ring she lent to Bane when they left Gotham, the smaller one is still on her right hand, and then she heads out. 

There is no way she can find the headquarters and she's not sure it would be wise to go there anyway. She doesn't have enough money to travel anywhere, just what's left of the grocery money, and there aren't a whole lot of places where she can go on foot. It's just wilderness for miles and miles, but she's fairly certain she can find her way to the other town, where Ra's lives. If anything has happened to Bane, maybe he knows about it. 

It's a lot further on foot than by car and she's not entirely sure she's going the right way. To her untrained eye everything out here looks practically the same and she wasn't paying much attention to the details when Bane drove her up to Lakeview. They were arguing about religion. It seems almost petty now. There are a lot of things that don't, but she wants him to come back anyway. 

She's sweaty and her feet have begun to ache when she finally reaches Ra's house. The relief she feels is cut short. Armed guards, not unlike those at the gate at the headquarters, point their weapons at her. 

“Hands where we can see them!”

She obeys, but she's bewildered, completely unprepared for this. The house looks the same, a nice, comfortable place, but the men in cargo wear give it a more sinister air.

“State your name and business!”

“Robin John-Blake, I'm here to see Ra's.”

“You don't have an appointment, turn around and leave.”

“I didn't know I needed an appointment.” Is she really arguing with soldiers pointing guns at her? 

“Turn around and leave, this is your final warning!”

She doesn't have a choice. Shit. 

One of the soldiers lowers his weapon then. “Wait,” he says. 

Robin looks back. 

“That's Bane's girlfriend,” he says to the man standing next to him. 

“Get back to your position,” the other guy says. 

“Maybe we should let her in?”

“It makes no difference who she is, she isn't cleared.”

Robin waits. Her heart is beating hard. Maybe it's because of the brisk walk, or maybe it's because she's once again being held at gunpoint, or maybe it's the frenzied state she's whipped herself into, alone in the house.

“You wanna tell him we made her turn around?” soldier number one says. Robin doesn't recognize him, but she supposes he must have seen her.

“Those are our orders,” soldier number two says. 

This might very well be one of the best guarded places in the country right now. Assuming Ra's is really in there. She's not likely to be let in.

“Can I get a ride back to Lakeview then?” she says. “My feet hurt.”

Nothing happens. The soldiers all stand there like statues. Then soldier number two speaks.

“You're one-hundred percent sure she is who she says she is?” he says, addressing his colleague.

“Yes, sir. I saw her at headquarters.”

Soldier number two finally lowers his weapon.

“You can come on in then, ma'am,” he says. 

Robin feels wary, though, even as she walks up to them. There are a lot of them, and just one of her, and they're armed. 

“I need to look through your bag.”

Robin hands him her backpack and then she holds her arms out as the other one pats her down. She gets her bag back. 

“This way,” soldier number two says. 

He speaks on his radio and tells whoever is in there to open the door. 

In the house is another soldier, although he isn't in cargo wear. He's dressed as a nurse, perhaps he really is one, but Robin has seen straight backs like that before, the well-defined muscles discernible beneath his shirt and the stance. He's a soldier. 

“Hello,” he says. 

“Hi.”

Both the door leading to the living room and the door to the dining room are closed.

“I'm Henry.” 

“Robin.”

“You're here to see Ra's? He's resting at the moment.”

“Okay. I can wait. He may not remember me.”

Wouldn't it be just great if he ordered these people to kill her? 

“I need to use the phone,” she says. 

“I'm afraid that won't be possible.”

“Why not?”

“You're not even supposed to be here. Who do you need to call?”

“I need to call Bane!”

She is surprised herself that she raises her voice. She doesn't know where that anger comes from, because really she is afraid. Henry, however, seems unperturbed. 

“You can dial the headquarter yourself,” she says, partly because she doesn't have the number. She's really winging it now. “He's there.”

At least she hopes he is. If he isn't she's in much worse trouble now than she was before she left the house. 

Henry looks at her. “Alright,” he says then. 

He opens the door to the dining room, she isn't surprised to see that he has to use a key, and then she follows him out to the kitchen. It doesn't look the same as it did before. All surfaces have been cleared. There was a knife set on the kitchen counter before and a wrought iron stand for paper napkins on the table. Those are gone, as are the copper cups that lined the shelf above the stove.

There is still a phone, though. Henry hands her the receiver and then he dials the number. 

“You're gonna stand there?” Robin says to him. 

He doesn't reply, but he leaves the room. She is certain that he is just on the other side of the door, though, to make sure she doesn't hang up and calls someplace else, but at least she can pretend he isn't listening.

There is a click and a voice says “Yes?”

It's a woman. Robin can't even be sure she's reached the right place, she just has to trust that Henry got the number right.

“I'd like to speak to Bane,” she says. 

“Who's calling?”

Girlfriend sounds inadequate somehow. Flimsy.

“His wife,” Robin says.

They won't know it isn't true. He could have married her last week. It doesn't matter if they believe her or not, if he's there and everything is fine, she'll get to speak to him either way. 

“Hold on,” the voice says.

Robin waits. She waits for a long, long time, then finally there is a rustling noise at the other end.

“Hello?”

That's Bane. He sounds different over the phone, but she recognizes his voice. The tightly wound knot of worry in her belly eases.

“It's me,” she says. “Robin.”

“Where are you?”

“I'm at your dad's place.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I was worried, you've been gone so long.”

It's quiet for a couple of seconds.

“There's nothing for you to be worried about,” he says then. 

“I just... I got worried.” She went slightly insane. But without him she can't go home, without him bad people, worse people, might come for her. 

“I was told my wife was on the phone,” Bane says then. “That's funny, because I don't remember having one.”

It feels strange to talk to him on the phone. She's never done that before. 

“Yeah... I thought it sounded more official.”

“It does.”

It goes quiet again. 

“I have to go,” Bane says then. “Don't worry.”

“Okay.”

“You can stay there at my dad's, if you don't want to be alone.”

“I think I'll go back to Lakeview.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

“Okay. Bye.”

She hangs up. She feels stupid now. Henry is waiting in the dining room. No doubt he has heard every word she has said, so he probably thinks she's a hysteric, but she finds she can't be bothered to care, at least not much. What does he know, about anything that she's been through?

“Do you wish to see Ra's?” he says. “He doesn't get a lot of visitors.”

He probably doesn't get any visitors, aside from his children. She doesn't have to know the inner workings of the League of Shadows to fathom what an enormous security risk he has to be. 

“Who is your boss?” she asks, feeling brave now that she has talked to Bane, and he is fine.

Henry looks at her, but doesn't answer. 

“You're letting me see Ra's, but you won't tell me that?” she says.

“I have the highest security clearance in the country. You don't. But of course that's not taking pillow talk into account.”

It doesn't sound quite as rude as it could have, because his tone of voice isn't condescending. The most surprising thing about it is actually that it can be interpreted as criticism of Bane. 

“I answer directly to Bane and Talia,” he says then. “Those doofuses out there were not supposed to let you through.”

“I've been here before.”

He nods a little. “So do you want to see him?”

She's not sure, but now that she's here she feels as if she has to. 

“He probably won't remember me,” she says. “He forgot who I was, when I was here before.”

“We'll see. The changes in his routine has worsened his condition. Sometimes when he's confused he gets violent, so either me or my colleague will be in the room.”

“Okay.”

Henry's colleague is a man named Mike. Robin waits in the living room while they go and fetch Ra's. 

“You have a visitor,” she hears one of them say, just before Ra's shows up in the doorway.

He looks pretty much the same as he did last time she saw him. He's well-dressed and his back is straight. But the look on his face gives away that he has no idea who she is. 

“Hello,” she says and tries a smile. “I'm Robin, Dorrance's girlfriend.”

“Hello,” he says. 

He holds out his hand and Robin sees Henry nod, ever so slightly, behind him. He's okay, apparently, at the moment.

She shakes Ra's hand. He has a firm handshake. 

“You're Dorrance's girl?” He smiles. “Then we better have some coffee.”

He turns and looks at his minders, and Mike nods curtly before leaving the room. Henry stays. 

“Please, have a seat,” Ra's says and gestures towards the sofa. “It's very nice of you to come and see me, I have to say. Dorrance isn't with you?”

Robin sits down on the sofa and Ra's takes a seat in one of the armchairs. 

“No, he's working.”

Ra's nods. 

“What do you do, Robin? Are you military?”

“No, I'm a cleaner.”

Ra's nods again. 

“I hope you don't mind my bodyguards,” he says then. “There's been some incidents, recently. There are people, even now, who refuse to see what we're trying to do.”

“I don't mind. I understand.”

She wonders if he truly believes that or if it's his pride telling him that they're bodyguards. 

“I'm not as young as I used to be,” he says.

“Neither am I.”

He smiles and his eyes glitter as if he found that funny. 

Mike shows up with the coffee. That has to take some dedication, she thinks, to be demoted to a housemaid and not complain about it. Maybe the trust Bane and Talia put in him makes up for it. 

They drink coffee and Ra's asks her a few questions, about what she likes to do, she replies reading and she really likes listening to the radio, about where she's from, she replies Gotham, although she is worried that that will set something off. It doesn't, but a while later Ra's looks at her with a strange expression on his face. 

“Dorrance isn't coming?” he says.

“He can't right now,” Robin says. “He's working.”

“It was never his fault. I took him in because Talia loved him so much. But sometimes, when I looked at him, all I could think of was Melisande, and how I failed her. My own wife.”

Robin feels a cold shiver go up her spine. 

“I let him keep part of his name, because I thought that would be easier for him, but maybe I shouldn't have. A clean start might have been better.”

He looks to be lost in thought for a moment.

“I've raised him like my own.” He stares at the carpet. “He's doing amazingly well. Top grades. And he's joined the army now, that will pan out very well, I believe.” 

She has no idea of what to say. 

“He'll be in a good, tactical position,” Ra's says. 

In the corner of her eye she can see Henry and Mike, but their faces don't give anything away. Perhaps they've heard this before, or perhaps it's their training. 

“I'm sure he'll visit you soon,” she says, because she doesn't know what to say.

Bane isn't his son? Then who is he?

Ra's looks at her a moment, then makes a move as if he is going to attack her, but Henry and Mike are younger and faster. They restrain him, while he yells orders at them, then profanities. 

Robin gets up, unsure of what to do, but finally she leaves the room. She goes to wait in the dining room, because it feels as if she shouldn't be seeing that. 

Henry comes in there a while later. She can see why he, and presumably Ra's' other minders, answer directly to Bane and Talia. Ra's was the leader of the League, but he is also their father. He knows things they don't want to come out. 

“That happens sometimes,” Henry says. “He forgets where he is and who everyone are.”

Robin nods a little. 

“For what it's worth, since he's unable to say it himself, he enjoyed your visit.”

He's going to live the rest of his life locked up here. They can't exactly move him to a regular retirement home, although there are nice ones for military personnel. 

“How well do you know Dorrance?” 

“Pretty well. We were in the same platoon, once upon a time.”

“You were there as a nurse?”

Henry smiles. “I have medical training.”

“He must really trust you.”

“It's not rocket science. He's my commander, I do whatever he tells me to do, and I keep my mouth shut.”

“Is that fun?”

“Fun... The rewards are far greater. Serving under him his an honor.”

Wow. 

“I should get back,” Robin says. Truth is she's exhausted.

“I'll tell them to drive you.”

“Do you ever leave this house, or do you live here?”

“I live here, but I can leave the house.”

Robin takes her backpack from where she left it on the floor in the hall. 

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” she says, because in a weird way it actually was. 

“Likewise.”

He doesn't acknowledge that he heard any of the things Ra's said. Robin figures that he was handpicked for this job for that very reason.

**

Robin neither hears nor sees when Bane finally gets back. She wakes up in the morning, when the pale light outside the windows makes the shadows shift, and he is lying next to her. He's close, warm against her back, his arm around her. The weight of it feels solid. His hand is resting between her breasts. She wonders if he does this often, holds her while she is asleep. 

The events since Gotham has left her hollowed out somehow, and it feels as if he poured himself into that cavity. Or maybe she did that herself. Lying there she has the strangest feeling of being in the stillness in the eye of a storm. 

She thinks about the things Ra's told her. She contemplates saying something about it to Bane, but she doesn't know how. He hasn't said a word about it himself, not even when they were talking about her being an orphan, which would have been the perfect opportunity if he wanted to tell her. He was a child once and like all children he was powerless. The power he wields now makes that easy to forget.

She puts her hand on top of his and he interlaces his fingers with hers.

“Do you want to marry me?” he says. 

The question doesn't come as a shock. She has expected him to propose, sooner or later, ever since he more or less told her he wanted to have children with her. And after the conversation they had on the phone a few days ago, she could almost visualize how he was turning it over in his head. She figured he was just scrounging up the courage. 

He doesn't lack courage, she has to give him that. But she does.

“Yes.”

He kisses her shoulder. She waits for him to do more, get her to turn around, kiss her, perhaps sex, but he just keeps holding her.


	15. Chapter 15

Robin is wearing the same dress she wore to the dinner party, because it's the only one she owns. Bane is in civilian clothes. Robin thought he might wear his uniform, but he doesn't. Getting married is personal, not a military business. However, the wedding takes place at the headquarters of the League of Shadows, mainly to keep Bane's identity under wraps. 

Talia officiates the ceremony and it only takes a minute. It doesn't feel real, it's swift and insubstantial. Robin and Bane both sign a piece of paper and it's done. Robin thought her hand would shake, but it doesn't and she writes her name neatly on the line. 

Even though it isn't strictly a necessary part of the ceremony, they exchange rings there in Talia's office, while the insignia of the League of Shadows stare down at them from the wall behind the desk. 

They have decided to reuse Robin's grandparents' wedding rings. They are perfectly good wedding bands and they already have them. Robin is rather relieved by the lack of fuss, it suits her just fine and Bane is a practical man, so on this they agree. 

He slips the smaller of the rings onto her left ring finger. Then it's her turn. His hand is big next to hers, veins run along the back of it, and the skin is warm and dry, calloused in places. The rings fits, she knows it does because he's already worn it, but she still has to use a bit of force to get it onto his finger. 

“Congratulations, you're husband and wife,” Talia says.

Robin looks at Bane and he smiles at her, then leans forward and gives her a kiss, just a brief one. 

“I'm so happy for you,” Talia says, smiling wide, and she gives them both a hug.

For all intents and purposes she is the new Ra's al-Ghul. It's official. This morning there was a story on the radio about how in all schools across the country they had started the day with assemblies, during which the children swore allegiance to the League of Shadows and their new leader. The reporter did a very good impression of being moved and they had cut in snippets of children's voices. They even interviewed a small girl who said, perhaps spontaneously, perhaps because she had been instructed to, that she thought it was great that a girl could be the leader of the country, and because she was so inspired she was giving her allowance to the poor. 

Talia al-Ghul is as anonymous as Ra's was, though. The people don't know what she looks like, who she really is, she is the faceless warrior on the insignia. 

“Do you want to change your name?” she asks, looking at Robin. “I can file the paperwork for that now too, if that's what you want?”

Robin looks at Bane. They haven't talked about that, forgot about it perhaps.

“It's easier if you don't,” he says. “If you do you'll need to carry two IDs, since al-Ghul is so well-known.”

“What do you want?” 

She asks, even though she balks at the idea of changing her name. 

“It doesn't matter to me,” Bane says. 

He looks and sounds as if he genuinely means it. 

“I won't change it then,” Robin says. 

“Okay,” Talia says. “I'll see you later.”

Since it's daylight outside Robin dons a blindfold for a few miles, she did on her way up here as well, but given her proneness to car sickness, Bane doesn't make her wear it all the way. 

It's a beautiful day, her wedding day. The air is clear and chilly and the blue sky wide and arched like a cathedral ceiling between the mountain tops. They stop at a flower shop by the road. It's a small, square building with a flat roof, but beautiful bouquets and pots of wintergreen are lined up on a table outside. Inside it is cramped for space and Bane seems to take up what little there is. 

“Hello.” The shopkeeper is an elderly man. 

“Hi.” Bane looks around. “Do you have any tulips?”

“I'm afraid it's not season for tulips now,” the shopkeeper says and smiles a little.

Robin could have told Bane that. 

“Perhaps something else might do?” the shopkeeper says. “These two-colored carnations are quite beautiful.” He looks questioningly up at Bane. 

Bane nods. The shopkeeper starts putting together a bouquet. 

“Are they for the graveyard?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I'll put in some greenery then too, shall I?”

Bane nods again, then turns around to see where Robin is. She's standing right behind him. She smiles at him and he smiles back.

“Your sisters are well?” the shopkeeper asks. 

Robin is surprised by the question, but Bane doesn't seem to be. 

“Yes,” he says. 

The shopkeeper nods and smiles. “I suppose your father must be getting on in years, not unlike myself. I haven't seen him in a while. If he should want to, I'd be happy to keep an eye on the grave, keep it tidy and put flowers on it. I know how it is with you young people, you're busy, it's understandable. But it would be no trouble for me, I'm there almost every day anyway, I take care of a few graves already.”

He knows exactly who Bane and his family are. 

“Thank you,” Bane says. “I'll let him know.”

For such an extremely well-kept secret, it seems outlandish that this man should be privy to it. But of course, Bane grew up around here, people knew him and his family. They all live in the shadow of the League's headquarters, though. Quite a lot of the people who work up there have to live in the small towns scattered across the mountains. A presence like that is probably felt, even if it's never spoken of. 

The shopkeeper has finished the bouquet. He smiles at Robin. 

“Something else, for you? Just put an elbow in his side, a little discreetly.” He gestures with his own elbow. 

Robin smiles. “I'm good, thanks.”

Bane looks at her and she looks back, still smiling. She likes this shopkeeper. 

“You want something?” Bane asks.

“No, thank you.”

They pay for the flowers and walk back out to the car. The graveyard is just a stone's throw away. It's old, the lines of gravestones uneven, and wind and weather have smoothed out the names on a lot of them. Not all, though. There are newer graves as well, and fresh flowers on them. 

Robin follows Bane to a pale stone in one corner.

Melisande  
Beloved wife and mother

There is no last-name, for the sake of anonymity perhaps. Bane puts the flowers by the stone. It feels utterly strange to stand there and know that this woman may not even be his mother. Robin takes his hand, then they go back to the house to pack.

There's not a whole lot to pack. They left Gotham with very little, lost that, and are now about to return with not much more. Robin is in the middle of folding clothes when it suddenly comes over her. The ceremony went by so fast, it was as if she couldn't fully grasp it. She didn't really feel any change. The ring gleams on her left hand and it's for real this time. She said yes to him and now she's his wife.

She goes to the bathroom and locks the door. Sitting on the toilet lid she has a long good cry. It's best to get it all out, because there is no going back. 

She's in there a long time, long enough that Bane comes looking for her. He knocks on the door.

“Are you alright?” he says. 

“Yes, just a bit of indigestion.” She manages to keep her voice even.

“Okay.”

She splashes water on her face and waits a moment. She checks in the mirror to make sure there are no signs of crying on her face before she leaves the bathroom. 

She finds Bane in the kitchen where he is emptying the fridge. He's taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves.

“Do you feel better?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

She picks up a carton of eggs.

“It seems a shame to throw all this away,” she says.

“We can bring it over to Dad's.”

“I'm done packing upstairs. Is there anything else that needs to be done?”

“No, just make sure all the lights are off.” He looks at her. “You would be more comfortable here, I don't know how long it will take...”

“I'm not staying here.”

They've already had this discussion. Bane has flat out refused to bring her with him to Gotham, citing the fact that she does not have the proper training, nor is she a member of the League of Shadows, and therefore she has no place being at the front lines as they reclaim the zone. She couldn't get him to come around. 

He thinks she should stay here, safe in the mountains, until things have calmed down, but she doesn't want to. He even suggested she could go and stay with his sister Nyssa, as another option, which was a bit of a surprise since Robin has gotten the distinct impression that they don't get along. All of it amounts to the same thing, though – that she stays away for as long as he thinks there could be any threat to her safety. 

Who knows how long that will take and it's the opposite of what she wants. She wants to return to Gotham City as soon as possible. She's homesick and she feels as if she somehow left a part of herself there, and she is desperate to go back, to get it back. If she's nearby, in the next zone, she'll feel better and perhaps she'll get to go home sooner.

He meets her gaze and nods a little. It's frustrating though, how quick he was to forget all the danger that they've already been in, together. She helped them stay alive, but now he wants to be chivalrous in the most annoying way possible.

They carry their suitcases, and the bag of groceries, out to the car and then they lock up the house. Going by car to Ra's' house is much faster than when she walked there on foot. This time they don't even have to state their name and business, the guards recognize Bane and don't bother with the formalities. 

Henry greets them inside. He shakes Bane's hand and then Robin's. He's friendly and behaves exactly in the same manner as he did when she was here by herself. She has wondered a bit if he would tell Bane what Ra's talked about with her, but as far as she can tell he hasn't. He probably keeps all the secrets he learns locked away.

Ra's is in the living room, reading a book. He gets up from his seat when they come in and he greets Bane with a firm handshake, then smiles at Robin. 

“Robin,” she says and holds out her hand.

“Of course.” He takes her hand in both of his. It's a very good piece of acting. He knows he has probably met her before, but can't remember it. 

He spots the rings.

“We got married today,” Bane says. 

“That is wonderful news. That's why you're here, to give me the good news?”

“Yes, and we're leaving town, so I don't know when I can come visit next time.”

Ra's nods. “I'm very happy, and proud.” He squeezes Bane's shoulder. “Let's see what we can scrounge up for a bit of celebration then.”

They have coffee and neither Henry nor his colleague are in the room this time, presumably because Bane can handle his dad on his own. Ra's seems to be all there, though. They talk about various things, including Robin, which she finds a bit embarrassing. 

“How's Talia doing?” Ra's asks then. 

“She's doing fine,” Bane replies. “Things are coming into order.”

Ra's puts down his coffee cup. “I actually always thought it would be you,” he says after a few seconds, “who would take over once I stepped down.”

“Given the circumstances it wasn't convenient. But Talia is an excellent leader.”

Ra's nods a little. “I didn't mean for things to go the way they did. What I did... I regret it.”

Bane nods. Ra's has a look on his face as if he is in pain. He takes Bane's hand in a tight grip. 

“You're my boy.” 

From where Robin is sitting she has a clear view of them both, and she can see that Bane has tears in his eyes. 

“I have a lot of regrets,” Ra's says. 

“It's okay, Dad,” Bane interrupts him. 

“You're not one of them, I'm very proud of you.”

Robin sits as still as a statue. She feels like an intruder, it's such a private moment, and she's almost tearful herself. Grown men crying is moving, almost no matter what. And she's never seen Bane like this before. He tries to compose himself, wipes his hand over his face. 

It's quiet for a moment, then Ra's turns to Bane again.

“I've barred the cellar door, but they keep coming in there.”

“Who?”

“All sorts. Running about like that is unacceptable. It's a security risk!”

Bane looks at him for a few seconds. “I'll have a look at it,” he says.

“It's not enough to board it up,” Ra's says. “They get through that.”

“Okay.”

“I don't know how we're going to solve it.”

“I'll fix it, don't worry.”

They talk about nonsense for a while longer. Ra's doesn't get aggressive or violent, perhaps because even though he is confused and upset about the cellar door, he doesn't forget who Bane is. He will though, one day, Robin thinks. When they're leaving he doesn't remember who Robin is, and says to Bane that he thinks she'll make a fine recruit. 

Bane nods. “She's my wife, though,” he says. 

Ra's stares at him. “Lovely wedding,” he says then. “Very lovely, but between you and me, the bride looked pregnant.”

Robin has to bite her lip not to laugh. It shouldn't be funny, especially not since she's worried she actually might be pregnant, but the rudeness is just hilarious and she's fairly certain Ra's isn't even talking about her. Bane looks dumbfounded for a second. 

“Okay. Bye Dad. See you soon.”

Robin glances at him as they walk back to the car. 

“You just have to laugh about it, sometimes,” she says when they've passed the guards stationed outside. 

“You're not offended?”

“No. I thought it was kinda funny. Not that he gets confused, you know I don't mean that, but that remark was funny.”

Bane looks to be lost in thought. 

“I know it's hard,” Robin says. “He's your dad, and now you're the grown up, and he's not anymore, not completely.”

Bane looks at her. “Yeah.” He strokes her cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For coming with.”

They drive to a restaurant in town, where Talia and Barsad are already waiting outside when they arrive.

“Congratulations, big guy,” Barsad says and clasps Bane's hand. Then he turns to Robin. “To you as well, I sincerely hope you'll be very happy.”

“Thank you.”

“When we're back home, I promise I'll get you a gift.”

“No, thank you,” Bane says.

“What? Just a small parrot!”

It's an old joke, apparently, but they drop it quickly since Robin is new to the company. 

Inside the restaurant it's warm and cozy. It's a small tavern and the menu is written in chalk on a blackboard on the wall. They get a table in a corner and order food that arrives quickly. 

“This is really good,” Talia says. “Is yours good too? Can I try one of your potatoes?” She looks at Bane and he nods.

She puts her fork in one of the pieces of potatoes on his plate. 

“Mm, that was really good too.” She smiles at Robin. “I really want to ask you as well, if I can try some of your food, but I don't know if that would be okay.” She laughs.

“Go ahead.”

“Yes? Oh, that's really sweet. Thank you. Yeah, that was good. I wanna eat every dish, really. That's the truth.”

“You want to steal all the food,” Barsad says.

“No, it's not stealing. Anyone want to try any of my food, please just do so, you're very welcome.”

They talk about a number of light subjects. Barsad proposes a toast for Bane and Robin, and they all clink their glasses together. It's a nice dinner and Robin tries her very best to enjoy it. Barsad is witty and Talia is very pleasant, really sweet. Robin finds her a tiny bit much, though. She can't really say why. Maybe it's just because it's so at odds with who she really is, or maybe it's just because she's Bane's sister and it's complicated. 

They leave the restaurant just before they close for the evening, with about an hour left until curfew. Not that any of them, except perhaps Robin, need to observe such rules, but they don't seem intent on using their privilege. Besides, they need to get going. 

“You know, I realized I never properly thanked you,” Talia says when they've stepped outside. The air is cold and smell of winter. 

“For what?” Robin says.

“For saving my brother's life. That is a debt I can never repay, and you will have my gratitude, always.”

Robin feels embarrassed and doesn't know what to say. She smiles a little and Talia smiles back. 

“He means the world to me,” Talia says. She gives Robin a long, tight hug. “I noticed you didn't have any wine,” she whispers in Robin's ear. “If the reason is a joyful one, I am so very happy. If not, I'm happy anyway, although I'd love to be an aunt one day.”

Robin knows even less what to reply to that, but Talia doesn't seem to expect a reply. When she lets go of Robin she hugs Bane, and then Barsad too. 

“I hope I'll see you all soon,” she says. 

“Talk to you soon,” Bane says. 

She smiles and nods, then she starts walking up the street, her hands in the pockets of her coat. Robin wonders if she's lonely. She looks lonely in that moment. 

Robin, Bane and Barsad walk over to where the car is parked on the next street. 

“I can sit in the back,” Robin says when Barsad moves towards the door to the backseat.

“No, it's fine. Isn't there some rule, married women have to go in the front seat?” He turns to Bane. “Come on, back me up.”

“I have no idea of what you're talking about, and I'm staying out of it,” Bane replies. 

They drive to the airport, where a plane is waiting for them. It's dark outside the windows and Robin can't see the Rockies as they leave them. In a way it already feels as if she was never there.


End file.
